
Mass-Scale Cold Fusion a Success? - andrewcross
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success
======
synctext
If it sounds too good to be true...?

No graphs, no public measurements, no scientific publication: no merit.

Honest inventors want to be transparent and have their historical claim
validated by top-ranking organisation. Clearly another case of wired.com
diving into the fantastic and inspirational. Just search and see what their
methodology is over the past months. Just invest a bit more money and we can
do a bigger test... Nice income source, not an energy source.

Just look at how the media is being manipulated. Amusing if it wasn't a waste
of time and resources.

~~~
lutorm
_Clearly another case of wired.com diving into the fantastic and
inspirational._

Actually, _Ny Teknik_ , one of the publications cited in the article, is a
serious engineering/technology news publication. They do voice strong
concerns, so I wouldn't say the media is obviously manipulated.

~~~
anothermachine
That's the problem. It's a classic con technique. They get a few respectable
organizations to cover you and write articles like "2011's Cold Fusion Fraud",
and then they go around promoting their product as "Featured in _Ny Teknik_!"

You can't defeat a con with a rational discussion. The solution is to shun or
propagandize back.

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jakeonthemove
I really want to believe it works, but this cloak and dagger stuff is killing
me. Anonymous customer, technical glitch preventing it from generating the
advertised megawatt, connected power cable? Is it real or not?

Then again, with Starlite we have real videos showing that it withstands at
least a torch, yet nobody commercialized the stuff, because the inventor was
supposedly too greedy... what a shame.

~~~
powertower
You would think that anyone with half a brain would have foreseen that not
disconnecting the 500KW generator from the set up would look suspicious. But
neither the inventor nor the customer had this insight?

It's also very suspicious for the planned 1000KW output to be reduced to the
exact output level of the generator.

~~~
Sapient
I don't believe this is real for a second, though I would love it to be. But I
wonder why, if it was connected to the grid, did they not just produce the
expected 1MW...

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njharman
As described, no independent validation, power cable connected, all smoke and
mirrors; it's an egregious wrong to call that a "test".

~~~
mousa
Add to that it's all being done by an ex-convict entrepreneur and it looks to
me like the only reason this is a story is because it's a story. He did a good
job hyping it.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think, after a very cursory review of some of the reports on this
E-cat stuff, that yours is a fair summary.

He didn't just do a good job "hyping" it, it seems, but a good job selling it
too. I don't mean selling in the exchange of goods/services sense but he
appears to have won some high profile support.

For example:

"Rossi has licensed the technology to a start-up called Ampenergo. Though new,
the company has credentials; one of its founders is Robert Gentile, Assistant
Secretary of Energy for Fossil Energy at the US Department of Energy (DOE) in
the 90's." (Wired, [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/06/e-cat-cold-
fu...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/06/e-cat-cold-
fusion?page=2))

"Together with Sergio Focardi, professor emeritus at the University of
Bologna, and Giuseppe Levi, a professor in the university’s Department of
Physics, the trio claimed a low-energy nuclear reaction device that produced
extraordinarily large amounts of excess heat." (from a New Energy Times
article strongly criticising Rossi,
[http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/08/07/rossis-
scientific-...](http://blog.newenergytimes.com/2011/08/07/rossis-scientific-
failure-in-seven-steps/)).

And again: "On March 29, two Swedish professors went to Bologna, expenses paid
by Rossi, to see Rossi's device in action. Sven Kullander is professor
emeritus at Uppsala University and chairman of the Swedish National Academy of
Sciences Energy Committee. Hanno Essén is associate professor of theoretical
physics and a lecturer at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology and was
the chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Association until April, when he declined
to run again. On April 3, they wrote a report endorsing Rossi's claim." (New
Energy Times again,
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml>)

Clearly there's a bit more to this than just a convict hyping some vapourware.

I'm not saying you can't fool professors of physics however.

From the little I've read it seems that there is an assumption being made (see
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml>, "Steam quality
...") that all of the water is being ejected as dry steam when it is probably
wet steam, steam mixed with a fog of droplets of water. This error leads to
vastly inflated calculations for the emitted energy.

However, that wouldn't explain the current ½MW demonstration ...

It's going to be interesting to see how this one breaks down.

------
jberryman
So I'm guessing this guy invented the bit about his secret customer too. Hired
some actors in lab coats to play engineers from said company.

------
jameskilton
Other discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3170907>

Frankly I'm assuming it's a scam, or at best very very badly named, until we
find out more details.

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SimonPStevens
Leaving aside the speculation about whether this is real or not, the E-Cat is
not cold fusion.

Rossi: "is not cold fusion but weak [force] nuclear reactions."

New energy times quote from Rossi -
[http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/36/3626-energycatalyz...](http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/36/3626-energycatalyzer.shtml)
Wikipedia - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Catalyzer>

~~~
Mizza
"New Energy Times" is published by Rossi. Why are we all still talking about
this nonsense.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In which case he publishes a lot of dissenting matter,
<http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2011/37/3705report3.shtml>. Wouldn't that
suggest that he believes the process works too?

Or is it your contention that this is all part of a huge fraud and that
publicly annihilating his own claims is part of Rossi's method?

------
ck2
If they used US tax dollars to buy this, there would be serious hell to pay.

~~~
cpeterso
What if the secret investor is Solyndra? ;)

~~~
jeffreymcmanus
If that were true then it would represent a microscopically small fraction of
the taxpayer money wasted on experiments and prototypes performed every year
on behalf of the defense department.

------
anothermachine
Question in Headline?

Answer: no.

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dgregd
They should sell energy, not that power plant. You don't sell duck that lays
golden eggs. Obvious scam.

~~~
hugh3
Not necessarily. If I'd invented a wacko free energy source (and I don't
believe for a moment that they have) then I'd sell the machines, or the patent
to the machine, and not the energy.

Why? Because I don't want to spend the rest of my life running a utility
company.

