

Hydrogen/Nickel Cold Fusion Breakthrough - y0ghur7_xxx
http://pesn.com/2011/01/19/9501747_cold-fusion-journals_warming_to_Rossi_breakthrough/

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PaulHoule
(1) always be skeptical of any "free energy" device that requires energy
input, (2) calorimetry is hard, particularly when phase changes are involved.

Joe Newman showed up my undergrad institution with his "Miracle Motor" which,
with some instruments, would appear to send power back into the grid. Of
course, it wouldn't run if it wasn't plugged into a power source.

His motor worked a lot like the old spark-gap radio transmitters, and would
send an pulse of wideband RF energy back into the line, which would of course
totally screw up clip-on inductive power meters and many other instruments.

Funny, the motor needed about 10 kilovolts to work, and was normally powered
through a neon sign transformer. I jokingly suggested that we put 100 car
batteries in series to power it, and a potential investor said, "Great, let's
go to Ace Hardware."

I cobbled up a circuit in the lab that would screw up power meters in the same
way and made the [measured] statement that "conventional power meters don't
accurately record the performance of the motor"

The senior lab tech in the EE department came under Newman's spell and didn't
show up for work the next day. A friend of mine who worked for him and I were
looking for him all over town, and one day a hippie asked me "Have you ever
heard of gyro power?" Well, it turned out that he'd set up a makeshift lab in
the garage of a drug house, funded by a consortium of real estate investors
from Albuquerque.

My friend and I showed up loaded for bear, equipped with measurement gear,
surveillance equipment, and burglar's tools. (We figured if we nicked the
motor, Newman would think the CIA took it) It turned out the head hippie was
home, and he invited us into the garage to check out the lab. They had a big
lathe they rented for turning coils, and some measurement equipment from the
E.E. department, but Newman was sleeping with the motor in his hotel room.

The investors lost interest and Newman blew out of town, but the lab tech had
been changed by the experience. He used to listen to good music, like Jeff
Beck, but afterwards he only listened to bad Christian Rock. He got paranoid,
thought people were trying to run him over when he was walking on the road,
and thought he got attacked by the president of the school's dog. He quit his
job about two months later and went to Mississippi to study at the foot of the
great man.

It was a loss of a damn good lab tech.

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jbm
It seems to be quackery. Points of interest (taken from links below):

>> Journal of Nuclear Physics? Really?

\- A web site registered in California by a secret entity. \- A “journal” that
is not a journal but a blog. \- A blog name that resembles the (real) former
Soviet Journal of Nuclear Physics. \- A virtual “editor” comprised of a “team
of scientists.” \- A “team of scientists” who’s only active participant
appears to be Andrea Rossi. \- A “10 kW module reactor” that is anybody’s
guess. >>

<http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=198040>
[http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/14/focardi-and-
rossi-...](http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/01/14/focardi-and-rossi-
reality-or-scam/)

I'm not really convinced.

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jws
_The amount of power required to heat water 80°C and convert it to steam is
approximately 12,000 watts._

Alarm! Alarm! Someone throw that journalist a life ring, she is in over her
head.

Update: I was unsure if 'Marriane Macy' would need a 'he' or a 'she', European
names confuse me, and got so distracted by her Amazon book that I forgot to
give proper acknowledgement to the outer article's byline. Surely "Buddy of
Georgia, USA" is a source beyond reproach.

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JimboOmega
These things come up from time to time, the perpetual motion machines and the
like. This one is rubbish.

The thing that makes fusion attractive is it makes some minimal theoretical
sense - if you can get two hydrogen atoms to combine into a helium atom, you
get helium and a surplus of energy. So it is not perpetual motion based on
magnets or total bunk like that.

But as jbm pointed out, there's a lot of flaws in it. Not the least of which
is that I got tired of reading the article before I saw what critical insight
they had in terms of getting those hydrogen elements to combine. If this was a
respectable publication, I'd have to think that'd be one of the first things
to be explained, at least in journalist-ese.

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th0ma5
The regular journals out there really need to step up and start making a
community around this low-energy nuclear reaction stuff. The Navy has
rekindled interest in this and other similar electrolysis experiments. The
problems are many, but key are 1) what is the working formula to explain how
this works and what all is going on 2) where are the dead grad students and 3)
do you need to answer those two things before using it.

The American Chemical Society has had a meeting about all of this most years,
and a lot of great videos on the topic can be found from a meeting at the
University of Missouri (google video search <http://bit.ly/exACQU> ).

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y0ghur7_xxx
The demonstration (in italian)

<http://www.journal-of-nuclear-physics.com/>

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r00fus
From the "What you can do" section at the bottom:

3\. Purchase a unit and/or encourage others who are able, to do so.

Sounds like a scam. Any real breakthrough would be pushing to get major
funders on board via trails, demos, etc, and not appealing to a blog reader to
buy a unit.

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fendrak
"I don't have conclusive data on radiation but absolutely we have measured ~12
kW (at steady state) of energy produced with an input of about just 400
watts."

Free energy? Something smells fishy...

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rbranson
While I have extreme doubts, I really hope, for humanity's sake, that this is
true. If it all pans out, this would likely be the greatest invention of the
21st century.

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dnautics
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_hydrogen_battery>

