Monday, November 14, 2011

NCReg: Cold fusion?? The machine that changes everything

One day, somebody, somewhere will invent the machine that changes everything.

What if one day, somebody, somewhere was last month, in Italy and the guy is named Rossi?

If you haven’t heard of Andrea Rossi, you will be forgiven. He hasn’t received much press and the press he has received has been largely unflattering. Most scientists think that he is a quack at best, a fraud at worst. But what if, just what if, he is something else entirely? Right.

The story goes back over twenty years ago (longer actually) when two scientists named Fleischmann and Pons wowed the world and the press with their experimental findings of cold fusion. Cold fusion is the holy grail of energy production, a clean, easy, and almost limitless supply of cheap energy. As it turned out, Fleischmann and Pons’ experiment was flawed and could not be re-produced. Their careers and their names were destroyed along with Cold Fusion (or LENR—Low Energy Nuclear Reaction) research. Which was all well and good as most scientists think it is impossible. Of course, in my mind, that is one of the leading arguments in its favor. More on that later.

So for the last 25 years, very few scientists even looked at the possibility of LENR (aka Cold Fusion), but a handful did. And something strange happened. Some of them reported that using nickel and hydrogen at room temperatures, they could produce more energy than they put into the system. Lots more. Too much to be explained by a chemical reaction. But none of them could or can explain why. So many other scientists, being of open mind but closed ears, respond “If you can’t explain it, it isn’t happening.”