Caltech – COLD FUSION NOW!

March 23, 2015March 27, 2015

Live Long and Prosper – Cold Fusion Now!

Title graphic: Cold Fusion Then – Cold Fusion Now!.

It was twenty-six years ago today that the world learned of a new form of energy that promised a green technological future for all life on Earth.

Twenty-six years later, we can’t yet buy a reactor in Home Depot, but prototypes are multiplying in independent labs.

We don’t yet have university labs training a new generation of scientists, but young entrepreneurs are self-organizing around open-science principles.

The ground is formed, and a figure emerging. A critical mass of awareness has occurred.

Could a man like Bill Gates ignore what he was told one day last fall?

And where would the most powerful man in the world go to get the real deal on the scientific question of our time?

The Department of Energy? Oh do not be cruel.

Dr. Robert Duncan, former Vice Chancellor of Research at University of Missouri, was key in creating the Sidney Kimmel Institute of Nuclear Renaissance (SKINR), now directed by Dr. Graham Hubler, formerly of Naval Research Lab.

Watch Graham Hubler’s SKINR Overview from ICCF-18.

Slide from Graham Hubler's SKINR Overview at ICCF-18 — Slide from Graham Hubler’s SKINR Overview at ICCF-18

Now Dr. Duncan is at Texas Tech University as Senior Vice President for Research, where he is Founder and Director for the Center for Emerging Energy Sciences (CEES). From the Texas Tech University Board of Regents Agenda Book for the meeting December 11-12, 2014 [.pdf], CEES will study the Anomalous Heat Effect (AHE), one of the many names for cold fusion that emphasizes the mysterious and as-yet-unknown reaction that creates fusion-sized heat from small, table-top reactors.

According to Texas Tech, total research expenditures topped $140 million in 2012. What portion will go to CEES? Even 1% would be a welcome change, but not enough to do what CEES wants: to discover the nature of the reaction, and engineer a technology.

They will partner with ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development and contract with a scientist “soon to retire” from SRI International. These two institutions are experienced in the field of condensed matter nuclear science, publishing major results over twenty-six years of research.

Dr. Vittorio Violanted at ICCF-18 — Dr. Vittorio Violante of ENEA at ICCF-18

Director of Energy Research at SRI International is Dr. Michael McKubre, whose lab dream team has reproduced results such as the correlation of excess heat from cells that use a fuel of deuterium with the amount of helium produced. ENEA’s early experiments probed the properties of materials. Led by Dr. Vittorio Violante, the lab has worked the SRI regularly for the past two-and-a-half decades to produce unique metallic hydrides used in the numerous ground-breaking experiments. He briefed Bill Gates and friends last November.

The complete service environment for a new energy technology is now in place. We have the metal, we have the water, and we have a desperately broken global economy ready for re-tooling.

Alliances are forming. How will the LENR community respond?

Cold fusion scientists, so used to being ignored, now expect to be ignored. They are as ill-prepared today for the onslaught of attention as Drs. Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons were twenty-six years ago when the two quiet researchers emerged from their basement lab to tell what they had found, and were crushed by the satellite environment invading their every beaker.

Since then, the International Society for Condensed Matter Nuclear Science should have had CNN covering their conferences, but most of the time, they had NO ONE. When someone was there, it wasn’t Anderson Cooper, it was Infinite Energy Magazine, and sometimes, those scalawags from Cold Fusion Now.

When the Gates Foundation does makes their move (and how could they not?), will the second tier of capitalists start jumping in? Will CNBC start sending professional crews for sit-downs with real video equipment – and lights?! You betcha!

And where will the press go to for clear information? How do you start to investigate a story that has been hiding in plain sight for two-and-a-half-decades?

Well, er, I am available as of this morning to design and manage any public relations campaign, so please do call.

What will you get?

Hmmm…

UPDATE on Cold Fusion Now Actions

I have little time to blog anymore.
The poor Cold Fusion Now website is neglected and in disarray. (Wanna help re-design? Email me!)
My activity hasn’t stopped…

Last fall, I was on our local TV news surreptitiously holding two cold fusion books, Developments in Electrochemistry Science Inspired by Martin Fleischmann and The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, as I talked about the upcoming Science Night at our community college.

More recently, our little town’s tribute to Leonard Nimoy, simply called Spock Day, brought the news cameras out, and they caught a little promo I always bring with me. Notice the Cold Fusion Now sticker in the corner?! How about the new Hydrogen coasters on the bar? Check out these photos snapped off the TV:

Geek girl Ruby Carat with KIEM News' Steve King, and Astronomer John Pedicino. — Geek girl Ruby Carat, KIEM News Steve King, and Astronomer John Pedicino.

KIEM-TV's Brad Curtis with partial CFN sticker — KIEM-TV’s Brad Curtis photographed on TV with partial CFN sticker

Hydrogen atom coasters on the bar at Spock Day courtesy Cold Fusion Now!

All lots of fun, but is it really making a difference?

YES!

While cartoons of hydrogen atoms, and running around leaving coasters on bars may seem like a joke to the serious-minded, (and I’ve gotten the “disgruntled” mail to prove it!) I believe that every act of advocacy is worthwhile, and has the potential to change one life, or a billion lives.

Any moment, a teaching moment!

In a recent algebra class, I was demonstrating properties of polynomial functions. I brought up Making Sense of Alumina Spectral Emissivity, a new paper by Bob Higgins on his deep-dive into the thermal imaging of the nickel-hydrogen “dog-bone” reactors. It is an excellent introductory article to the sticky issues in thermal measurement. In the paper is the equation for radiant power emitted from a blackbody as proportional to the temperature of the body to the fourth power, M = εσ T⁴.

As I started to talk about how coefficients scale a function, and in particular how the emissivity effects the radiant power in this equation, several students brought up Andrea Rossi and the E-Cat – more than ever before! I was able to answer some questions, putting people on the path to reason, instead of reaction. Who knows what that will be inspired in the minds of creative youth?

New movie finished; waiting for release!

Even more fun was the trip to San Diego this past January to interview Navy scientists on their work in cold fusion research.

Altogether, I filmed a total of five hours video interviews with Dr. Stanislaw Szpak, Dr. Frank Gordon, both from the SPAWAR lab, and Dr. Melvin Miles, from the China Lake Research lab. I have finished editing a first movie from those interviews, and I’ve already started on a second.

It’s important to have these scientists who’ve worked so long alone to tell their own story. Cold fusion has a complicated history, with a complicated science, and complicated people. As it moves to the mainstream, and information begins to dissipate through the feeds, a need for simplicity will distort the truth of the real events as they happened.

If the people who lived it don’t tell their story, someone else will. The LENR community must shape the story of what happened when one of the greatest discoveries of all time was kept from the world. It is important for the integrity of those who suffered the consequences; the intrepid researchers must be recognized, and the rest of us deserve a clean-energy future.

Hep the elite to what’s going down!

Dr. Melvin Miles visiting Caltech January 2015.

I had picked up Dr. Miles for the trip to San Diego, and on the way back, we stopped in Pasadena, California at the campus of Caltech for a little advocacy. Dr. Miles and I dropped off copies of the chapter on cold fusion from Developments in Electrochemistry Science Inspired by Martin Fleischmann to a few key Caltech faculty. Written by Dr. Miles and Dr. Michael McKubre of SRI International, the chapters were distributed in mailboxes to such luminaries as David Goodstein and Nate Lewis. We were able to hand one personally to Dr. Harry Gray, an eminent researcher who Miles had met years ago at another college.

Walking into Dr. Gray’s office, he was open to meeting us, and surprised at the activity in the LENR field. He remarked, “I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Postcard for LENR book on Caltech bulletin board.

I also put Cold Fusion Now stickers and postcards for Dr. Edmund Storms‘ The Explanation of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction on lots of Caltech bulletin boards, knowing many students will see them, and not be as closed-minded as their professors.

Rocket scientists always get the latest

Postcards, stickers, and magnets were left at Voyager Airport Restaraunt. — Postcards, stickers, and magnets were left at Voyager Airport Restaurant.

Always a stop on my travels, the Mojave Spaceport got another dose of news when I dropped off stickers, postcards, and calendar magnets to Virgin Galactic‘s office there and the cafe where all the rocket scientists eat lunch.

I left a serious wad of materials on the way down to San Diego (I asked permission, and the gal said “Oh yeah, we’re always happy to have more stuff to look at”), and when I came back through a week later, they were all gone, so I laid more down.

The Cold Fusion Now calendar magnet was still on the soda machine. Yah!

Cold Fusion Now calendar magnet sits at Mojave Spaceport soda machine!

Got a ticket for the ride of your life?

We have only to look back at the early publications of Infinite Energy Magazine, started by Eugene Mallove and Jed Rothwell, to see what lies ahead: an explosion of interest, and businesses popping up like clover. I get dizzy thinking about the speed at which this nascent technology will sweep the planet – and I can’t wait!

For twenty-six years, the world has been moments away from breakthrough. We don’t have to wait much longer. We will have a second chance at designing living arrangements for all the life on our planet – and we can begin now!

All in all, the lack of activity on the Cold Fusion Now website is only because we are taking our activism to a new level. I do want to sincerely apologize to everyone I have not written back this past year. Your messages are important to me, and give me a boost when I really need it. I thank you and am grateful for your support. With two p-t jobs and a mortgage, I haven’t been able to respond in a timely manner. I will do better.

There is much more activity going on, but it’s still premature to tell the details.
Like, did I ever tell you about the time …

..Aiy yai yai!

LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!

Ruby at Spock Day: "The good of the many outweighs the good of the few!" — Ruby at Spock Day: “The good of the many outweighs the good of the few!”

COLD FUSION NOW!

November 3, 2012November 13, 2012

Cold Fusion and Cocktails

I think the whole cold fusion community, scientists, researchers and advocates alike, were outraged by the cold fusion hit piece that was recently posted on Scientific American. Believe me, I was as perturbed as many of the rest of you. I had an article full of righteous indignation and anger but never posted it. While I am still perturbed, a couple of days of reflection have allowed me to gain a bit of perspective.

Scientific American is the oldest continuously-published monthly magazine in the United States. It has been in circulation for 167 years. Many famous scientists, including Einstein, have contributed articles to the publication during it’s over century and half of existence. However, its reputation has been in a slow and steady decline for the past half-century. The decline in its once stellar reputation has been even steeper in the last decade, where its contributors have taken questionable stances on a variety of issues, including commentary on political matters like the Iraq War. The publication also did not endear itself to anyone when it raised its college library subscription rate by 500% in 2009. No, this is not your great grandfather’s Scientific American, any more than cold fusion is the kind of nuclear power your mother told you about.

Cold Fusion Now Bumper Sticker

It is in this environment that we find the quasi-scientific blog of Jennifer Ouellette’s, Cocktail Party Physics. That name alone should tell us that this is not really an overly serious endeavor. The author herself admits her forte is “finding quirky connections between physics, popular culture, and the world at large.” She has written several books in this vein, one of which extols her bravery in overcoming her fear of calculus. On the other hand, most serious about science overcome their fear of calculus by the time they graduate high school. Cold Fusion Now’s own Ruby Carat would think it immodest to call herself a serious scientist but has an academic background in physics and a graduate degree in mathematics. She obviously overcame any “fear of calculus” many moons ago and didn’t think it was such a big deal that she had to write a book about it. If Ouellette is gracious enough to accept Ruby’s invitation for a chat about her article over cocktails, I hope it is live streamed over the Internet. That is one conversation I would like to be privy to.

Yet, Jennifer’s approach to science and its relation to the world at large would have made her a perfect candidate to give us a review of “The Believers.” It would have been right up her alley. Instead, when someone mentioned the film to her, she inexplicably choose to write a 3000 word article espousing every myth and sophomoric joke about cold fusion perpetuated for the last 20 years, and never actually bothered to see the film. A bit curious to say the least.

The question is why? What was the purpose and point of doing this as a response to the release of a film that won top honors at the Chicago Film Festival? Well, there are some interesting theories about that. For example, Dr. Michael McKubre suspects the article is a “concerted effort by several leading members of the opposition.” This according to comments made recently by Jed Rothwell on Vortex-l. Some might dismiss that notion as a cock-eyed conspiracy theory but, upon further review, there might be something to that suspicion.

For example, Ouellette’s husband is Sean Carroll, a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, or CalTech. Yes, that would be the same CalTech whose failed replication attempts were largely conducted before many details of the original experiments have been released (as was the case with many reported replication failures). It was CalTech physicist Steven Koonin that infamously said that Fleishmann and Pons were “psychotic and delusional.” Indeed, the anti-cold fusion bias runs deep at CalTech. One can imagine that Jennifer has heard many cold fusion stories over the years from her CalTech physicist husband and his colleagues.

Steven Koonin

It should also be noted that Ouellette writes a column for a publication of the American Physical Society, the APS News, entitled “This Month in Physics History.” In an interview on the “The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson,” this author describes the nexus and ongoing association with the mainstream physics establishment:

“I was actually a freelance writer in New York City trying to make a living , and it turns out the physicists would pay me. It is really as simple as that. They needed someone who could put physics concepts into plain English that would be able to appeal to a broader audience.”

http://youtu.be/4J-8a2NPHUE

As any student of literature knows, many of the earliest written stories in human history where myths handed down through generations via the oral tradition practiced by story tellers. The individual who actually put these myths to paper did not have to vouch for their accuracy or truthfulness. That was not their role. It seems that our “recovering English major,” Jennifer Ouellette, is playing the role of modern scribe for the myths of the mainstream physics community regarding cold fusion. This may explain why she shut down the comment section of her blog with the quickness. She was not able to appropriately counter the evidence provided that contradicted the 20 year old myths she strung together in her article. As pointed out previously, and as reiterated in the interview above, we are talking about an individual who, basic calculus aside, is “terrified of math and physics.” Having to talk about things in ways that require critical thought and examination of all the evidence probably sends her running for her cocktail shaker or the neighborhood pub.

As the saying goes, when considering praise or criticism, consider the source. Yes, I know, it is easier said than done. For those who have done their research, to hear old myths repeated with ignorant certainty as scientific truths is infuriating. But we must keep in mind that if a 20 year old myth, regurgitated by a writer who is “terrified of math and physics,” is all there is to worry about, we are in pretty good shape. So, sit back, enjoy a cocktail of your own, and try not to let scientific fundamentalists and the ignorant make you see red. I have an inkling that very shortly (within months), there will be a significant LENR disclosure and those who continue to cling to tired old myths will look as foolish as the cocktail party attendee who has had one too many and ends up donning a lamp shade on their head.

July 16, 2012December 29, 2016

Melvin Miles on Calorimetry: “We got excess heat”

It’s been twenty-three years since the announcement of the discovery of cold fusion, and yet, this powerful solution to our energy needs is not even recognized by the Department of Energy (DoE), despite the interest of other federal agencies like NASA and the military.

In trying to understand why, I learned that it was the top science schools in the U.S. who produced negative reports early in 1989 that influenced both federal policy and mainstream academic science, and still do today. Read Remove Institutional Blocks for more.

In that year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California Institute of Technology (CalTech) conducted experiments to test the claims of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, two scientists who had discovered a powerful form of energy that could be created in a test tube. These experiments by MIT and CalTech were to be the centerpiece of the DoE’s Energy Research Advisory Board report, a report that would determine the federal response to cold fusion and shape energy policy at the highest level of government.

However, as long as twenty years ago, several studies have shown that the experiments conducted by MIT and CalTech were seriously flawed. Dr. Mitchell Swartz of JET Energy and the designer of the NANOR device still on public display at the MIT campus, did the first analysis showing that some temperature data had been shifted downwards, with no adequate reason given for why.

Since then, Dr. Melvin Miles, a former university chemistry professor and Navy researcher, has performed several studies on the calorimetry of MIT and CalTech finding major mistakes in experimental procedure and heat measurement. The most recent analysis was published in the Journal of Condensed Matter Nuclear Science and co-authored by Dr. Peter Hagelstein, an MIT electrical-engineering professor, and the lone cold fusion researcher on the campus. [.pdf]

I met with Dr. Miles to talk about his work de-constructing the original style Fleischmann-Pons electrolytic cell, and becoming an expert at calorimetry, the art of measuring heat. I wanted to ask him about these early studies that had such influence, and what went wrong. Our conversation ensued for over four hours.

We met at the Chemistry Department at University of LaVerne where Dr. Miles had previously taught and we were joined by Dr. Iraj Parchamazad, Chairman of the Chemistry Department there. Dr. Parchamazad is also a cold fusion researcher who has recently had an amazing success in generating excess heat from palladium-loaded zeolites exposed to a deuterium gas. With no energy input besides that needed to make the zeolites, he is able to get a huge energy return. I will be writing about Dr. Parchamazad’s work in an upcoming article.

These first two videos discuss Miles’ work on calorimetry, on which he has spent two decades of his career.

This is not a discussion about technology, but science. The cells on which Miles works are research experiments, designed to determine variables, and answer the multiple criticisms that have kept this science out of the mainstream. The skills he has developed in calorimetry make him one of the top scientists in the world with this specialty.

I provide for you here this fascinating look into a meticulous researcher’s inner process of discovery, a scientific experiment that has lasted for two straight decades, and which only recently has begun to provide a preliminary model for the mysterious and mercurial cold fusion reaction.

Armed with Science to Fight Climate Change an interview with Melvin Miles from University of LaVerne Campus Times March 2, 2007
“The government needs to be exploring energy alternatives and cold fusion is being ignored,” Miles said. “Even if there is a small chance it will work, it should be explored.”

“There is enough deuterium in the oceans to fulfill the energy needs of the world for 13 billion years. One gram of deuterium costs $20 and has the energy equivalent of 2400 gallons of gasoline. Also, the fusion of deuterium does not cause greenhouse gases that produce global warning.

“Science today is a new type of religion,” Miles said. “New discoveries or concepts that don’t agree with the scientific scriptures are to be banished without a fair hearing.”

Most 4-year-olds’ interests lie in toys, cartoons and cookies.

However, Melvin Miles, research electrochemist, was curious about the moon, stars and electricity.

“I tried to generate electricity at about age 4 by using baling wire, a light bulb, and stolen matches, and received one of my early spankings,” Miles said.

At age 8, he became hooked on chemistry when he experimented with his dad’s chemicals in the family barn.

He began reading his father’s books to learn about chemistry.
Miles went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Utah with a major in physical chemistry and a minor in physics. He wanted to become a scientist.

Now at age 70, Miles begins his day with a five mile run. He then researches thermal batteries at the China Lake Navy laboratory.”

continue reading here

June 15, 2012November 16, 2013

Protected: Poll shows divided perceptions of energy from American public

June 7, 2012June 30, 2013

Too Close To The Sun: 1994 BBC doc profiles early history of “cold fusion underground”

“If it had been anything else, we would have said, ‘Oh, people don’t want us to do it, forget it, just leave it alone.’ But this is not in that category. This is interesting science, new science.

If you’ve got any integrity, you don’t give it up.” — Martin Fleischmann

Too Close to The Sun from BBC Horizon recounts the story of cold fusion from the initial announcement in 1989 through developments in 1994 when the video was released. Multiple interviews with major players include Eugene Mallove speaking on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s bungling of cold fusion data, misrepresenting the actual creation of excess heat from their test cell by claiming they saw nothing. A later analysis by Mitchell Swartz of JET Energy revealed the blunder, though it was never corrected.

“The cold fusion episode will be looked upon as one of the greatest travesties against justice and understanding that has ever occurred in the history of science,” says Mallove.

Also profiled is Michael McKubre, whose Menlo Park lab SRI reported “up to 500 times excess heat” and Randall Mills then of Thermacore, now of Blacklight Power, “claimed 1000% excess heat” from light-water and nickel cells. At the time, that news prompted another “senior scientist at a national laboratory” to begin work on the phenomenon. In the film, that scientist remains unknown, speaking in the shadows, due to the stigma of this field and the backlash that clean cold fusion research brings.

Professor David Williams describes an early and earnest effort by Harwell Laboratory in Britain which found no effect from the experiments. He revealed his frustration on camera. “At first you assume it’s because you’re not smart enough, or not going long enough, or not doing things quite right, so you try yet more variations, and all the time all these claims are coming in from all sorts of people saying Oh they could do the first time around! You know, you feel like a right bird! Here are all these people saying they switched this cell on and bang, it works…..and we found nothing.”

Caltech T-Shirt shows loser mentality. — Caltech commemorates perhaps their biggest scientific failure with this T-shirt.

John Huizenga was Co-Chairman of the Energy Research Advisory Board ERAB that reviewed the evidence for the U.S. Department of Energy and issued a rushed report just months after Drs. Fleischmann and Pons’ announcement that effectively barred cold fusion research from any funding for over two decades, dropping clean energy in favor of expensive hot fusion and dangerous nuclear power plants that use radioactive fuel. The Department of Energy’s current $29 billion dollar budget has $0 for developing this revolutionary science.

The ERAB panel selectively chose what evidence to allow by claiming that anything that didn’t fit their conventional theory of nuclear science was impossible. “We wrote a very negative report and concluded that the results that were being presented to us were contrary to everything we had found out about nuclear physics over the last fifty years”, Huizenga said.

He authored the book Cold Fusion: The Scientific Fiasco of the Century claiming an untruth that defined the misinformation campaign’s motto to this day: “There’s no experimental evidence at this point that any nuclear reaction products have been formed. Therefore the claim that cold fusion is a nuclear reaction process without a commensurate amount of nuclear reaction products is simply pathological science.”

Though he attended several cold fusion conferences, and eventually went to a lab with a working cell at Cal Poly Pomona where Professors Robert Bush and Robert Eagleton were researching the effect, Huizenga refused to look at the data showing excess heat, first claiming he was “retired”. Then, after an invitation to stay a while and examine the cell with all his newly freed time, he hemmed, saying he had some “consulting” work to do.

Selectively ignoring data was rampant among the so-called “objective” science community. John Maddox, editor of science journal Nature had decided one year later that cold fusion was over. “I think it will turn out, after two, three years more investigation, that this is just spurious and just unconnected with anything that you would call nuclear fusion. I think that broadly speaking it is dead and it will remain dead for a very long time.”

Speaking on those early days in the U.S., when members’ vitriol stained the American Physical Society, Stanley Pons recalls, “You forget things in time. I can remember that was extremely bitter at that time. I thought we’d been treated extremely unjustly, which I still do. I think the critics were not operating in the bounds of sanity, and I think we were victimized in that respect. So I was quite bitter at the time and I’ve just chose to ignore it and just go on. I really don’t have any feelings about it anymore; it’s just a non-issue now.

“I think you become numb,” added Martin Fleischmann.

“You become numb to it, yeah.”

Keiji Kunimatsu, a former student of Martin Fleischmann persuaded Minoru Toyota, of the famed Toyoto car corporation, to fund the pair’s research, setting them up in a lab in the south of France near Nice. Toyota had already been learning about what cold fusion was. Kunimatsu had learned from Fleischmann that “Scientists must do something new which nobody has done before. That way is the spirit of science.”

Fleischman said, “It was a relief to get away from the terrible atmosphere in the United States and to have the opportunity to work totally without public attention for a period of time.”

Although reproducibility of this mercurial reaction continues to plague many labs to this day, a handful of researchers have made huge advances; a few to the point of developing a commercial technology. For these few labs, the clean energy of cold fusion is available on-demand: turn it on when you want, turn it off when you want. When the engineering of these devices finally produces a product, the over two decades of smug pontifications of an errant orthodoxy by the conventional scientific community will at last end.

In 1993, twenty Japanese corporations including Toyota, Hitachi, and Mitsubishi, financed the New Hydrogen Energy Laboratory for a five-year program called Icarus. Martin Fleischmann consulted on the new project.

In celebration of the inauguration of this project, he toasted “To Icarus One, and all the other Icarus’s to follow. And don’t forget, our wings are stuck on with superglue.”

Early T-Shirt design by Al Kemme and Associates — Early T-shirt design by Al Kemme and Associates reveals greater truth.

Thank you Martin Fleischmann.
Thank you Stanley Pons.
Thank you Eugene Mallove.

Thanks to you, we will have Cold Fusion Now!