Our next episode features Alan Goldwater, an independent LENR researcher with the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project.
He received a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Columbia University and studied architecture and computer science before having a successful career in electronic design and embedded software. Returning to his first love physics, Alan has assembled a small laboratory to test LENR systems in a Live Open Science setting.
Off the heels of the 21st International Conference on Condensed Matter Nuclear Science, Alan Goldwater visited the Cold Fusion Now! Central Office in Eureka, California and Ruby took the opportunity to get his take on the state of the field as presented over the five-day science bonanza.
Alan also describes his ‘glow stick’ experiments, which he reports as having shown up to 18% excess heat. He also talks about the importance of live open science in an environment of non-disclosure agreements and intellectual property filings.
Learn more about Alan Goldwater’s work with the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project and Live Open Science at quantumheat.org.
Read about the glow stick work in the Journal of Condensed Matter Muclear Science Volume 21 [.pdf].
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The MFMP has been offered something no one knew existed, something priceless and which could reveal critical secrets many in the LENR field have been seeking for over a quarter century.
Before Martin Fleischmann left the US, he personally gave a trusted friend an original pre-1989 Johnson Matthey palladium wire – the very same as used in experiments that led to that fateful announcement of a new primary energy source that came to be known as cold fusion.
He has held this secret all these years until now. We checked today with Mike McKubre, Vitorio Violante and Melvin Miles if there was any known public metallurgical and elemental / isotopic characterisation of this material, the answer was a resounding no.
It is known that the early attempts to replicate the Pons and Fleischmann effect mostly failed due to the purity and processing of ‘palladium’ used. In fact ENEA has been trying to establish what additives and structures are critical to creating the effect for more than 2 decades. Many of the principal research labs working in the field are trying to establish the correct crystal shapes, sizes, orientation etc. and chemistry.
In our own nickel powder / hydrogen research, we have tried to get the purest nickel possible – but have failed to see any excess heat. Now we know from our recent isotopic analysis of Dr. Parkhomov’s Nickel, that there is high concentrations of Carbon and Oxygen on the surface, elements also found in Rossi’s fuels.
The unique opportunity we have been honoured with is profoundly important, and there is not a person we asked at the conference that were not falling over themselves to help in what ever way they could. Ultimately it is down to the current owner to decide exactly what happens but from the available piece, which is about the thickness of a toothpick and between 7 and 8 cm long, the current plan is to
1. Use 3 X 2mm samples to characterise structure, isotopic constitution etc.
2. Run at least two 2cm segments in Pons and Fleischmann cells, copied from the original and/or use the original cell.
3. Reserve remainder
We will auction the ownership rights of the post run, post analysis 2cm segments in a one of a kind, never to be repeated auction. This is an unrepeatable opportunity to own the only known samples of this historic precious metal.
This auction, along with the auction of the donated 1 ounce Pd 1989 “Cold Fusion” coins is design to raise enough money the help ensure a fully faithful replication that will be conducted by someone who is not currently a member of the MFMP and who is a very experienced experimentalist. The work will be conducted in France with the help of Jean-Paul Biberian and all data will public.
We must work with the best resources on the planet to ensure that this materials secrets are revealed for all. It is wonderful to be a part of something that will yield critical data for advancement of the field.
More information to be published about the Vindication program.
The name of the current owner and how he came to be entrusted with the electrode will be revealed in time, right now, given the incredible importance to maintain security, we have been asked to hold off on publishing that information.
We want to take this opportunity however, to publicly thank the donor and curator of this material for coming forward.
—Vindication MFMP
ICCF-19 Program for Tuesday
Also from the MFMP Facebook page, that “Carl Page is in Padua, as is Bill Gates – apparently…”
Brillioun reactor coreDavid Nygren obtained a photo earlier in the day from Robert Godes, who was presenting at poster session. Godes described the photo, “That is a 3rd generation Brillouin Energy HHT reactor system…. we are now on gen 4. The Nickel rod fits inside the tube that goes all the way through the vessel with the bolted ring. We flow inert gas through the largest tube with the bolted ring and fill the second tube with H2 gas. We then pass high current pulses through the Ni rod. This system has produced 4X more thermal energy out than Q -pulse energy deposited in the core. We have performed this with the same core in both our lab in Berkeley, CA and at SRI.”
The video documents how just two minutes before the test reactor shell shattered, MFMP members Bob Greenyer, Ryan Hunt, and Alan Goldwater erected a “blast shield” to protect against any debris should a failure occur.
“Yes, cause at some point we’re going to have some molten lithium in there and I’m not sure I want that – or even vapor lithium – coming at us, so perhaps we should retire to a different distance?” Bob Greenyer can be heard saying on the video.
After successfully testing a new sealing method for simple reactor core manufacture, MFMP team members next experiment passes through the “Parkhomov threshold”, that is temperatures above which Dr. Alexander Parkhomov reported first seeing ‘excess heat’. As a precaution, the team erect a blast shield… and not a moment too soon!
NOTE: Look at the area of the ceramic outer tube just after the event.
As Francesco Celani says – Safety, Safety, Safety.
The video shows the effectiveness of Aluminum ferrule based swageloks sealing the 1/4 inch reactor tube to high pressures. Simple, fast, cheap, repeatable
It is not yet clear what exactly happened at this time. The test of the compression sealant was successful, and the endcap was secure. A surge in temperature is then followed by the reactor shattering.
“At least we know we have pressure.” says Ryan Hunt, just seconds after the pop.
The temperature readings before the cell popped.Reactor just after explosive event.
The event concluded a week of scheduled tests, broadcast live on their Youtube channel.
Bob Greenyer and Alan Goldwater are here to help execute a rapid series of live experiments. We have assembled all the test equipment we had hoped for. Now it is time to see how they work together. We have an ambitious plan with several tests, but the thermal assessment is the top priority. In the event that we run into some serious snags, be prepared for the plans to change and tests to be dropped.
Team assembles, Test equipment set up, integrated, and prepared. Lots of reading the manuals!
Tuesday
Starting at 9 am local time, or so.
Test 1: Calibration with Thermocouples, Optris camera, and Williamson Pyrometer.
livelink: http://youtu.be/0DY4TJmCJS8
Test 2: Fat coil dog bone with internal heat source
Test 3: Assessment of Alan’s calibrated alumina temperature sources
Wednesday
Test 4: Powder Test in sealed Alumina tube
Tests 5, 6, 7, …: Powder Test in sealed Alumina tube
Iterate and try different ideas while we have the team assembled
Thursday
Test X: High Temp Inconel Heater Dogbone Calibration
Other tests as deemed worthy
Friday, Feb 6
Team Leaves, wrap up
Beyond:
Discuss and write up
Whatever happened in the test today, it is a reminder that anybody contemplating experiments in energy must proceed with the utmost caution.
Practice science responsibly and gather experienced partners for safe and successful results.
The Live Open Science of MFMP utilizes the digital space to communicate and collaborate on a global. The research is focused on discovering the nature of a source of dense, ultra-clean energy from a plentiful fuel.
What no institution in the U.S. dare do, the MFMP collective puts together on fly specks.
00.08 “Yes, cause at some point we’re going to have some molten lithium in there I’m not sure I want that or even vapor lithium coming at us, so perhaps we should retire to a different distance?”
” ..can’t …flying particles is what I had in mind …(?)”
“I can hide behind the monitor there, but Ryan, from where your sitting, it’s probably easiest here since you’re in the line of fire…”
00:38 “We’re just erecting a blast shield out of respect.”
“Gonna do the infrared camera filter thing,
00:52 OK ready, it looks a bit like this …
ready, it looks a bit like this …
“Well, the photos I’ve taken look pretty much bang on,
so we’ll get those over to you at some point.”
01:13 “The Williamson is reading about 1027 degrees approximately.”
01:25 “On the chart here, we’re seeing 952.”
It’s interesting that ….
01:39 “It’s 797 to 834, about 38 degrees difference,
01:57 and now it’s 927 to 956.”
Ryan Hunt: “That’s 25. So yeah, that’s a little closer.”
Bob Greenyer: “What’s the Geiger counter doing? Not a lot….”
2:20 – 2:29 silence
2:30 POP!
“Well that was exciting!”
“Did you hear it?”
“Was the shield a good idea?”
“The shield was a good idea.”
“The shield was a good idea.”
“We have no silicon carbide element, and we have a vaporised reactor. So, was that a runaway reaction? We were in the domain of Parkhomov?”
“Well at least we know we have pressure.”
“Even though we shouldn’t have pressure at that temperature…”
Well, no, … the last …
“Oh my, that was exciting. Oh guys, that vaporised, it utterly, utterly vaporised, ….”
“Well, time to go and take some closer up pictures.”
“Well, bear in mind that there’s lithium-aluminium-hydride around, so perhaps we should open a few doors.”
“Does anybody know what that is supposed to smell like?”
The World Wide Web now traffics a new model of scientific collaboration as a group of young researchers tested a revolutionary energy technology live online today.
The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project at quantumheat.org formed in 2012 at ICCF-17 in Daejon, Korea, to find a reproducible cold fusion experiment, a task that no leading science institution had the sense or courage to try. The collective has tested replications of energy cells designed by Francesco Celani, Tadahiko Mizuno, as well as designs of their own.
Mathieu Valat (L) of MFMP and Francesco Piantelli (R) of Nichenergy discuss partnership.They are now focused on working with Francesco Piantelli, one of the first to explore excess energy from nickel-light-hydrogen systems, and, the “dog bone” model E-Cat, so named for the reactor’s appearance in the test report Observation of abundant heat production from a reactor device and of isotopic changes in the fuel [.pdf]
Andrea Rossi’sE-Cat was repeatedly demonstrated producing excess heat. Now owned by Industrial Heat, the technology appears to have been reproduced by well-respected Russian scientist Alexander Parkhomov [.pdf]. MFMP began to organize Project Dog Bone in October, and the group is now working with Parkhomov to reproduce his set-up. Today, a calibration test took place live on Youtube and Google hangouts, the online venues all the participation Silicon Valley can muster for this field.
Where are visioneers?
Bill Gates (far right) listens to Dr. Vittorio Violante at ENEA.Bill Gates‘ visit to ENEA labs, one of the leading institutions in the world on LENR materials science, was investigatory. How much he was told, we do not know. No further information was forthcoming from ENEA.
Nevertheless, the creators of this reality are keeping tabs on the field, but have not made funding available. Why would Bill Gates, who seeks solutions to energy problems, not see the solution cold fusion offers?
Why haven’t the daring entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley jumped on what Gerald Celente calls “the greatest investment opportunity of the 21st century”: an ultra-clean energy source that could power their technological fantasies for millenia?
David Niebauer, a lawyer who represents technology firms in California says Silicon Valley is not ignoring the field, but taking a “wait and see” attitude.
“VCs do not invest in research; they are looking for commercialization and sound go-to market strategies,” he says. “Until LENR has a viable commercial product, they will remain on the sidelines. I know a number of VCs and Silicon Valley tech companies that are watching the field with interest. Some small investments are also trickling in in the form of angel investments from individuals inside these institutions.”
Robert Godes, President and Chief Technology Officer of Brillouin Energy Corporation (BEC), a commercially-minded company based in Berkeley, California developing their own Brillouin Hot Tube reactor has met with difficulty convincing Silicon Valley capital to migrate across the bay. When asked if the Digerati were stepping up to fund new work, the answer was a flat, “No! – but we’re doing OK.”
Brillouin captured around $2 million in funding over the last couple years, money spent on hiring engineers and lab staff, and funding a collaboration with SRI International in Menlo Park, California to test their technology. They’re getting a lot of science on the way to a product.
“We have gotten results back on 3 of 5 electrolyte samples we sent out for analysis”, says Godes, “and I am hoping to get the last two soon. We can reliably produce Tritium which is a step in the process. At the same time we are also using T so that it does not build up in the system to the point where it becomes a concern for users of the technology.”
Says Godes, “We need to sell less of the company to obtain the capital required. We are close to completion of a new manufacturing process that will allow us replicate the demonstration we ran for Mike McKubre [the director of the Energy Research Lab at SRI]. That will provide another big boost to the valuation of BEC.”
A little support could make a big impact
Companies like Industrial Heat and Brillouin Energy Corporation (and there are more) represent the small independent start-ups in the new energy field, and a handful of staff is all most of these companies have. Even ENEA, the institute Bill Gates visited in Italy, is a company with perhaps less than 500 employees. How would an investment from the Gates Foundation effect their research?
Gates and Khosla both support Terra Power for next-generation nuclear technology.“We do know that Gates often invests along side his friend Vinod Khosla, one of the wealthiest and most successful VCs in the world”, says Niebauer. “Khosla is famous for his “Black Swan” theory of investing and if ever there was a “Black Swan” it is LENR.”
“If Gates and Khosla took an interest and investment position in the field, it would be huge. What we need is more investment to speed up and expand the research being conducted on a shoestring by a handful of private companies. Also, not to be underestimated is the simple acceptance [of LENR] as a valid field of research. More physics and engineering students need to be encouraged to study the field – a Gates/Khosla bet would spur research and development on many levels.”
Still, some researchers in the field say too much is still unknown to engineer a product and money is better spent on an all-out science lab where experiments would reveal nature of the reaction. Former Los Alamos National Lab nuclear chemist and author of The Explanation of LENREdmund Storms would like to see funding for lab that would have tens of experiments going at once to “breakdown each parameter space.”
“Theory guides the optimal engineering of LENR,” says Storms.
Figure emerges from ground
Cold Fusion is the Mystery Landscape that Bob Dobbs described in his model of cultural evolution. A usable technology is not yet publicly available, but the ground is forming to support it, and MFMP Live Open Science is a vital component.
While the bulk of Silicon Valley intelligence, creativity, and capital is focused on developing the next phone app, the new pioneers of technology are utilizing the network for a collaboration of global scale, and doing it on fly specks. The Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project is making our clean energy future a reality, and inviting you to participate.
Says Michael McKubre, “It would not take much to turn the LENR/CMNS field from resource-limited to talent-limited. I am looking forward to a very exciting 2015.”
The following is a google-translated and slightly modified Press Release from Open Power Association at hydrobetatron.org. The original in Italian is here.
*************************************
We are honored to be able to announce that Prof. Francesco Celani officially will collaborate with Open Power!
Francesco Celani, besides being always our friend as well as an esteemed scientist, is an honorary member of “Open Power” from the foundation of the Association itself.
On Thursday, December 11, 2014, Francesco Celani visited our new laboratory in Rome where he met with Ugo Abundo, our President and Scientific Director of the Open Power Association, for a scientific debate on issues of common interest. On this occasion, the relationship of scientific collaboration that will occur between us and Francesco Celani was made official.
Interviewed by Luciano Saporito, his words filled us with pride about our commitment in the field of new energy. Francesco Celani claimed that “the Open Power laboratory is well structured and the enthusiasm of the researchers involved is strong. The research ranges in different, complementary directions, is carried out in specific work islands; procedures are scientifically confirmable, and the equipment well-built and well-engineered; the fields of investigation are integrated and promising, and the proposed solutions innovative and desirable to make optimal maximum effort in running the designed projects.”
Francesco Celani also explained, in some detail, to Ugo Abundo the NEW discovery (June 25 2014) an electrical phenomenon, apparently not due to known phenomena, due to the interaction of Hydrogen gas with long (100cm ) fine wire (diameter 100 microns and 200-meter) of Constantan (alloy Cu_55%, Ni_44%, Mn_1% with traces of iron from 0 to 0.5%) having the surface covered by the same Constantan with reduced dimensionality (measured between 50 and 5000 nm with SEM) as a methodology developed by the LNF even with help, at various levels of external colleagues.
The whole is measured, at a macroscopic level, when such INDIVIDUAL wires, electrically isolated from each other, with sheaths made of borosilicate glass, placed inside a reactor also having the hydrogen gas, have an internal temperature of about 150° C and external next environment.
In other words, it is as if you were in the presence of a new form / method (apart from the well-known Seebeck effect and / or Thompson) DIRECT CONVERSION from Heat to Electricity. From the point of view of scientific speculation, the role of Hydrogen understood as mono-atomic and / or even proton is a truly challenging idea. Obviously we’re just starting, though recent (December 15, 15:00) results show that the ignition temperature is not 150° C but only (about) 55° C. Some suggestions on the issue of “abnormal current” were provided to Francesco Celani also by some researchers, collaborators Open Power.
Francesco Celani is Senior Researcher of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Frascati (INFN), and Vice President of the International Society of Nuclear Science and Condensed Matter (ISCMNS). Francesco Celani came to the study of “Cold Fusion”, now called LENR, out of “suspicion”, as he himself tells us. Indeed, he has always operated by the “methodological skepticism” of Descartes, always inspired by the desire for “truth”. As Franklin Eugene Mallove denounced the falsifying of data in a report on “Cold Fusion” experiments by the MIT (due to the interests of the establishment and related to funds for research on nuclear fission which they already enjoyed), Francesco Celani has courageously instigated the diffusion of two internal documents he himself accidentally discovered on two NASA research efforts on “Cold Fusion”, (that of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons), which validated results from years ago.
Francesco Celani in his decades-long work as an Experimental Physicist, was always animated by a spirit truly Scientific, (also a worthy interpreter of the tradition of the experimental method of Galileo Galilei). He is also a proponent of a vision given to the needs of humanity in general, and to the Italian people in particular, that is, as far as possible, having real evidence in the daily life of the” Citizens Whatever, and now open source, the science itself.
His previous participation in the methodology of Live Open Science (LOS), founded by the working group “Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project” in 2012, continues, and is further strengthened. Both collaborations, with MFMP and Open Power, share the same goals in the same fields of human knowledge: one at International level and the other National.
Our next episode features Alan Goldwater, an independent LENR researcher with the Martin Fleischmann Memorial Project.
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