Independent Researchers Test Rossi's Alleged Cold Fusion Device For 32 Days

WheezyJoe (1168567) writes The E-Cat (or "Energy Catalyzer") is an alleged cold fusion device that produces heat from a low-energy nuclear reaction where nickel and hydrogen fuse into copper. Previous reports have tended to suggest the technology is a hoax, and the inventor Andrea Rossi's reluctance to share details of the device haven't helped the situation. ExtremeTech now reports that "six (reputable) researchers from Italy and Sweden" have "observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, "far more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume."... "The researchers, analyzing the fuel before and after the 32-day burn, note that there is an isotope shift from a "natural" mix of Nickel-58/Nickel-60 to almost entirely Nickel-62 — a reaction that, the researchers say, cannot occur without nuclear reactions (i.e. fusion)." The paper (PDF) linked in the article concludes that the E-cat is "a device giving heat energy compatible with nuclear transformations, but it operates at low energy and gives neither nuclear radioactive waste nor emits radiation. From basic general knowledge in nuclear physics this should not be possible. Nevertheless we have to relate to the fact that the experimental results from our test show heat production beyond chemical burning, and that the E-Cat fuel undergoes nuclear transformations. It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding. Moreover, the E-Cat results are too conspicuous not to be followed up in detail. In addition, if proven sustainable in further tests the E-Cat invention has a large potential to become an important energy source." The observers understandably hedge a bit, though: The researchers are very careful about not actually saying that cold fusion/LENR is the source of the E-Cat’s energy, instead merely saying that an “unknown reaction” is at work. In serious scientific circles, LENR is still a bit of a joke/taboo topic. The paper is actually somewhat comical in this regard: The researchers really try to work out how the E-Cat produces so much darn energy — and they conclude that fusion is the only answer — but then they reel it all back in by adding: “The reaction speculation above should only be considered as an example of reasoning and not a serious conjecture.”

Comments

Hoax

[ls671]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

Re:Hoax

[Teresita]

Everyone that says they have a box that makes energy from nothing, I say, phase match your box to the line current from the local utility, roll your meter backwards, and cash the ensuing checks. Then talk to me.

Re:Hoax

[ShanghaiBill]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

But to "prove" it works, you don't just have researchers look at it. They are trained to find experimental flaws, not deliberate deception. You should have professional magicians look at it. These are people who know how to find the "trick".

Re:Hoax

[Charliemopps]

Everyone that says they have a box that makes energy from nothing, I say, phase match your box to the line current from the local utility, roll your meter backwards, and cash the ensuing checks. Then talk to me.

But that's the thing. That sort of stunt would be chump change compared to inventing cold fusion. If the inventor really has figured something out, and I'll grant you that's unlikely, it would behoove him to keep a tight lid on it until he has pretty much the entire eastern seaboards worth of lawyers under his belt. History is littered with scientists and inventors that have ended up living in a gutter after discovering some of the most life altering technologies. If he really does have something, he'll be the target of every shifty technology company on the planet, who will steal it, and will patent it on their own.

Re:Hoax

[ErikTheRed]

You should have professional magicians look at it. These are people who know how to find the "trick".

You nailed it. I was just reading about James Randi's debunking of the alleged psychic Uri Gellar, who had managed to fool a bunch of scientists back in the 1970s. Randi claimed that scientists are some of the easiest people to fool because, as you said, they operate under a lot of preconceived notions and once you figure out how to work around those it's a piece of cake. As Randi put it, to catch a magician (who are essentially people who fool people for a living) you send a magician.

Re:Hoax

[Teresita]

That's the difference between an inventor and a scientist, between an Edison and a Maxwell. Somehow Einstein didn't end up in a gutter even after someone else made the first commercial reactor.

Re:Hoax

[swillden]

Of course, everything is a hoax and scientifically impossible until the day it is proven to actually work.

Nonsense.

Most real inventions go the other direction... first the theory, then the gradual working-out of the engineering processes required to make it work, a a little, then more hard work to refine it into something really useful and usable.

Most claimed inventions without theoretical justification also go a different way... they're thought a hoax and then are proven to be a hoax. The reason they're thought to be a hoax is exactly because nearly all of them are.

It is looking more possible that the E-Cat may not be a hoax. Further study may gradually exclude all other explanations, and eventually we may start to see conjectured mechanisms, one of which may emerge as the best explanation. Perhaps along the way we'll learn some new physics.

Or, we may find that the E-Cat is a hoax. That will be the less surprising (but sadder) outcome. Time, and further study, will tell. But if it does turn out to be real, your snark will still be completely wrong. Most everything that is real is known to be real before it works, and most everything that is a hoax actually is a hoax.

Re:Hoax

[timholman]

Everyone that says they have a box that makes energy from nothing, I say, phase match your box to the line current from the local utility, roll your meter backwards, and cash the ensuing checks. Then talk to me.

This, a thousand times over. Having a "free energy" machine, if it existed, would be like owning a machine that printed money.

Rossi claims he has constructed 1 MW reactors. Assuming this was true, and assuming Rossi could sell that power for just $0.10 USD per kW-hr, then he has a machine that effectively generates income at the rate of $100 / hour. Use half of that income for operating costs and personal expenses, and Rossi makes a net profit of $36,000 a month if the machine runs 24/7.

In a year Rossi has $432,000. Long before then, he would be able to build a second generator, doubling his income. Assuming one generator could "double" itself every six months, in five years he has a profit of $18.4M USD each month. In less than a decade, he is the wealthiest man on the planet.

So why isn't Rossi doing that, instead of trying to get investors to write checks? Because he can't, of course. Like all frauds and pseudoscientists, he is utterly incapable of actually doing anything useful with his so-called "invention".

Re:Hoax

[Jane Q. Public]

But that's the thing. That sort of stunt would be chump change compared to inventing cold fusion. If the inventor really has figured something out, and I'll grant you that's unlikely, it would behoove him to keep a tight lid on it until he has pretty much the entire eastern seaboards worth of lawyers under his belt.

That's the classic paradox, and it has plagued REAL inventions and inventors since the dawn of time.

The Wright brothers were so afraid that the secrets of their invention would get out before they could profit from it, that they only gave staged, pre-arranged demonstrations to limited audiences. So much so that Scientific American claimed they were fraudsters, and credited manned flight to somebody else, for something like 8 years after the Wright brothers' first announcement.

It wasn't until a later demonstration (in France, IIRC) which was widely witnessed and written about that SciAm retracted their recognition of the other guy and admitted that they were wrong about the Wrights (no pun intended).

Re:Hoax

[Beck_Neard]

> This, a thousand times over. Having a "free energy" machine, if it existed, would be like owning a machine that printed money.

Given a choice between making $400k a year (minus operating and maintenance expenses, which we have no idea of) and potentially making billions off an invention, which would you choose?

I'm not saying that this crazy e-cat device works. Based on what we know from physics, it's far more likely that it's a hoax (until they can produce evidence otherwise). I'm just saying that there is no reason to think he's a hoax just based on his business strategy. James Watt sold steam engines, not power.

Re:Hoax

[radtea]

Their measurements indicate more power is output than was input.

These measurements indicate the researchers have created an almost cartoonishly bad "open calorimeter" that they do not calibrate at anywhere near the operating temperature despite their estimate of heat balance being acutely dependent on making multiple temperature-dependent corrections accurately.

If a fourth year engineering student handed this experimental setup in as a design project, and included the low-temperature "calibration" as part of the design, I would fail them.

Re:Hoax

[peragrin]

Right and how do you keep it secret? once you start passing them out(even if you are just selling the power) someone will cut it up and duplicate it. Look at the number of cheap iPhone knockoffs that appeared a year after the iPhone came out. He doesn't have apple's lawyers to defend him.

Re:Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

The device has to be plugged in to run the "fans" and "pumps". Since nobody was allowed to look inside or analyse the wire, it's pretty obvious there was a hidden wire inside that was providing the juice. They didn't even check it with a Kill O Watt, just some shitty little tool run over the line that is easily fooled into thinking the device was receiving less power than it really was.

Andrea Rossi is notorious for his scams. He once founded a company that was going to convert industrial waste into oil, yet in all of the years that company was a around, they didn't produce anything. Instead, he got busted for dumping 70,000 tonnes of toxic waste and tax fraud, for which he spent 4 years in prison. Following that, he founded another company that was supposed to generate 1000 watts each. Out of 27 devices, 19 didn't do anything and the rest couldn't even manage to put out 1 watt.

The E-Cat is just his latest scam.

Re:Hoax

[gweihir]

You see, Rossi would love to do that, but he needs a bit of seed money first! Surely you can understand that. (Hehehehe, yes indeed. Classical method.)

Re:Hoax

[gweihir]

Here is also a nice analysis by some real scientists: http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/pap...

Re:Hoax

[alexgieg]

Yes, and Special Relativity is a minor antecedent to Einsten's real contribution, General Relativity. SR was a nice sum up of what was known until then, but not fundamentally novel, which is why he didn't earn his Nobel for it. Now, GR on the other hand was the kind of stuff that only happens once a millennium.

The usual way for something like GR to be developed would be by scientists noticing slight problems in measurements, then doing more experiments, then trying to generalize from those perceived mismatches, then testing again and again and again etc. It'd have taken several decades. Einstein took a different approach. He went on to think very hard on the fundamentals of Physics for about 10 years, then noticed that things couldn't work any other way and so formulated GR entirely. And it was so well done that it's been confirmed since the very first experiment that went to test its specific, outrageous claims (and there are a lot of those). He nailed it all correctly the very first try.

This is why he's recognized. E=mc2 is minor. GR is the true genius part.

Re:Hoax

[arth1]

The size of the element alone precludes it having stored 1.5 megawatt-hours by chemical or other known means.

Why do you presume it was stored, and not provided through one of the various tubes connected to the device?

Further, they did analysis on the metal isotopes (maybe you missed that part). Start reading the PDF on page 27.

Why do you presume that the materials tested afterwards was the same as what was inserted?

This shouts "fraud" with capital F, R, A, U and D.
And that's before considering that Mr. Rossi has a history of fraud, and has spent several years in prison over previous frauds.

The device's main mode of operation is to extract money from gullible venture capitalists. The scientists are just useful tools here, not adept at spotting fraud, but used to work with people who may be wrong, not outright deceitful.

Re:Hoax

[ShanghaiBill]

Relying on trade secrets is very dangerous. If someone else can independently figure out how it works, and build their own device, then he is left standing naked with no patent protection. He will have nothing. Trade secrets only work for things that are so difficult and complicated that there is little chance of someone else duplicating the invention.

Re:Hoax

[swillden]

All of your examples support my argument. It's not necessary that the theory be fully detailed, but the structure of the processes are generally understood.

In the example of the dynamo and the motor, much of the behavior of electric currents was already understood, and quantified, as was the fact that a current moving through a wire produces a magnetic field and vice versa. From that point it was an engineering effort (a brilliant one, including the observation that the effects could be usefully scaled up) to construct the useful devices. Faraday knew before he built them how he expected them to work, and why.

The steam engine definitely supports my argument. It was designed as a way to harness the power of expanding steam which was already very well understood, even if the Ideal Gas Law and other supporting theories related to thermodynamics, expansion coefficients, etc. were not. Regardless of all that wasn't known, the designers of steam engines (in their various stages) could explain quite clearly how and why they worked, all the way back to Hero's aeopile.

Rossi's inability to offer an explanation of the E-Cat makes me highly, highly skeptical that it works. Oh, he says words which he calls an explanation, but they fly in the face of already-understood theory, and he offers no explanations about why already-understood theory is wrong.

Re:Hoax

[alexgieg]

Of course not. First, Physics Nobel prizes are given for experimentally tested stuff, not for pure theory, particularly when said theory can (in principle) be subjected to testing at some point. Second, Nobel prizes are never given posthumously. The methods for testing GR were only developed near Einstein's death, and GR was only fully experimentally confirmed after he had already died. Hence, by a+b, no Nobel prize for him. Had he lived a few more years and he'd have won it.

Re:Hoax

[Anonymous Coward]

*Puts on tinfoil hat*

This may sound paranoid but if anyone actually did make such a device that works, his best bet would be to sound like a crackpot at first till he generates enough publicity that when it comes to light, there is enough to see it that it can't be hidden.

Think of it this way, he would upset a LOT of powerful players both inside and outside of the government (even the government doesn't want citizens to make power cheaply for themselves as it is one avenue of lost control in a big area). If someone to come out legitimately with a working prototype being demonstrated openly, before hardly anyone knew about him he would probably be bought out and the invention mothballed or found dead from an apparent accident or suicide.

As for this guy, no clue, most likely he is a scam artist or majorly flawed in his experiment but if his thing does work, then a decent amount of science would have to be revised and he would have a huge uphill battle for his invention to be allowed to see the light off day and hopefully it does't end up getting screwed over by incumbents like the electric car was for over a decade thanks to GM and Cheveron buying out the battery technology and banning it from use in cars.

Re:Hoax

[narcc]

are you saying that Randi fails because other cranks continue to peddle their crap to credulous public?

No. Read it again. I'm saying that Randi fails because every one of his high-profile "debunking" efforts have been failures. You'll find not a single success among them.

Then again, it's possible that he doesn't actually care if his "efforts" are fruitful. He could just be putting on a show for his followers. He is a performer, after all.

Isn't that exactly what Randi claims happened in the "Carlos Hoax"?

No, it's not. Randi's goal with the "Carlos Hoax" was to show how credulous the media can be toward frauds like "Carlos". The media, as it happens, were universally skeptical of "Carlos" -- a fact that Randi ignores because it runs counter to the story he's trying to sell to his witless fans. Put simply, Randi flat-out lied about the media's response to "Carlos" to further his career. (I'm not surprised that he lied, considering the risks he took. Identity theft, passport fraud, the list goes on. Would you want all of that to be for nothing?)

So, yes, I think I'll stick to the opinions of actual scientists. I'll continue to give known liars and criminals the credulity they deserve.

Re:Hoax

[Mr_Wisenheimer]

No, his case is not 100% different. There are ways to fool everyone, including physicists and other professional scientists. Heck, the physicists at CERN fooled themselves for quite a while when their experiments demonstrated that they had succeeded in sending information at greater than the speed of light.

If the inventor actually made a real patent with a full technical explanation, physicists would be in their prime and could actually pick apart the flaws in the design and figure out that it does not work and that the results cannot be reproduced.

However, experimental physicists operate under the presumption that everyone they work with is honest and doing science. That's how they are trained. In fact scientists might be the most open and honest professions. That's also why physicists and other scientists are easy to fool IF you exploit the fact that their skepticism is going to be largely directed toward your science and engineering, not your honesty.

You set up the device, break into the lab at night, charge it up, and there's a good chance they'll never notice. A magician or a cop might be more likely to figure it out because they've been trained to think skeptically about the honesty of others and have experience dealing with fraud and criminality.

Re:Hoax

[Solozerk]

I don't see that anybody checked the "reactor" coating materials for rare earth dopants.

Read the report (specifically page 8 and annex 2) - they actually analyzed the device's coating material. It was made of Al2O3 (and this was taken into account in the calorimetry), with no obvious other compounds.

While there are possible calorimetry issues here, it's hard to see an obvious one that would explain such a large measurement error; alumina IR transparency has been considered, as well as IR calibration issues (especially given the imperfect dummy test); both do not appear to be valid critics (see my comment here for details).

Given the extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence is obviously required here; and this report definitely isn't that. Its experimental protocol and the results obtained are however more than enough to warrant further investigation; which may be hard given that this isn't like a "classical" experiment, that can be easily replicated - you basically need Rossi/Industrial Heat (the company that acquired Rossi's device and tech) to provide you with his black box and stay the hell away from the test (this is the first time he actually did that; and even here he couldn't help himself being present for the initial "fuel" insertion and the ash extraction at the end of the experiment - which render the isotopic changes inevitably suspicious).

Re:Hoax

[PopeRatzo]

Just sell the power

In which jurisdiction can you "just sell power"? I dare you, try generate and sell electricity and see how long it takes before you're locked in a cell or buried under it.

I used to live in a little Missouri town that generated its own municipal electricity, economically and without any fuss, since the end of WWII. The energy companies spent the equivalent of 25 years worth of the revenue they would receive from taking over that franchise to get town officers elected who would eventually shut down the facility and contract with them. Eventually, when enough of these captive town officials had been elected, there was a controversial vote to stop self-generating. There was good evidence that the mayor and several town council members had been directly paid by energy PACs. Within 8 months, electricity costs in this town doubled. This was 7 years ago, and it's gone up and up since then. The new electric company uses the same generating facility that the town used to use. Every single town official who had voted to stop self-generating was eventually thrown out of office, but now there are contractual arrangements which prevent them from self-generating again for half a century.

Energy is one of those things that you are not allowed to produce. Look at the money the Kochs are spending to try to get localities to put taxes and surcharges on the sun, in order to kill solar energy initiatives by individuals. I'm convinced that energy is a major method of controlling people lives. It's economic control, and it's political control, and it's environmental control and it's control over how you live. And by the way,

http://www.nationaljournal.com...

and

http://www.nbcnews.com/busines...

Re:Hoax

[sjames]

As I understand it, it produces heat. Allegedly it produces more heat than can be accounted for by the electrical input. A heat source is a great start, but it takes a lot more than that to generate electricity and feed it to the grid.

Re:Hoax

[Solozerk]

Oh, he says words which he calls an explanation, but they fly in the face of already-understood theory, and he offers no explanations about why already-understood theory is wrong.

Agreed on this - it should be noted, though, that Rossi is not the only one that claims excess energy and transmutation using these kinds of mechanisms; look up for example the MIT NANOR devide (a small scale device that put out excess energy for more than one month straight), or the Mitsubishi transmutation claims in similar devices (later replicated by Toshiba). There are also other companies claiming similar things (Brillouin for one).

If this thing works (and that's obviously a big if), then I'd suspect Rossi discovered this mostly by accident, and that he has no precise idea himself of how it actually produces energy. IIRC, the few initial theories proposed are based on the idea of nano-scale lattices with trapped hydrogen inside; combined with some sort of excitation (EM usually, although not the only one that apparently produced some results) allowing somehow for the Coulomb barrier to be overcome at those scales and for a limited-scale, radiation-less (how ?) fusion to occur.

This is of course all pretty impossible given our current understanding of physics so if it does work somehow, it's wonderful news, even if it cannot be harnessed for energy; because it might lead to new, exciting physics.

Re:Hoax

[Cyberax]

I kinda doubt that Einstein knew about Olinto. But relativistic transformations are called Lorentzian for a reason, and Heaviside discovered the relativistic length compression. However, both of them thought that their results were artifacts of calculations and can be made to disappear with a careful selection of a reference frame and/or aether properties.

Then why do we Einstein made the mental leap that nobody before him was able to do - he actually said that the relativistic effects are _real_ and that if you consider them all together then they form a consistent theory. A weird theory where clocks run at different speeds and length and mass are not constant, which is why lots of physicists dismissed it at first.

Re:Hoax

[gl4ss]

it did affect it somewhat. not by too much, but at least a lot of people knew that Uri was just full of shit.

and nowadays Uri has gone to saying that he is not psychic or posses supernatural powers - though it took a long time after the expose to end up at that.

and I don't get whats so unscientific about randis skepticism, somehow his critics always believe in some sort of another magic, be it tesla-magic, spirit-magic or whatever(and consequently one conspiracy or another) - and always like "oh but his real psychic/inventor I know doesn't need the money"(but somehow they always need money from normal schlobs/investors).

Re:Hoax

[Dantoo]

Rubbish. Most of my generation are well aware of Maxwell Smart.

Not so much, maybe.

[luna69]

Please see: http://www.science20.com/a_qua...

Not quite as clean a confirmation as one would like: " It would be like if I asked you to believe that by putting a dollar bill in a special laundry machine and spinning it for half an hour with some special detergent the dollar turns into a $1000 note. You are allowed to watch the machine as it does its work, but it is me who opens it and extracts the bill when it has finished its magic conversion. I doubt you would buy it."

If it sounds too good to be true...

Re:Not so much, maybe.

[ColdWetDog]

Jeebus:

- They measure 'power output' with a thermal camera in free air - not even the faintest attempt at making a calorimeter.
- Rossi was present at a critical junction in the test 'loading the reactor' (whooo).

The former sounds very, very fishy. You can't measure quantitative thermal output of anything with a thermal camera suspended in a room. A much better method would be to use some sort of calorimeter - something that was enclosed and could measure all of the heat put out by the system.

Re:Not so much, maybe.

[radtea]

You can't measure quantitative thermal output of anything with a thermal camera suspended in a room

The whole thing is terrible. If you designed a system to produce incorrect energy balance results it would be hard to improve on this set-up.

Resting the device under test on metal rails?

Your input power is some weird three-phase thing with additional pulses? Why not DC, since the primary purpose of the input appears to be heating the thing up?

Your "unfueled" test runs at half the input power of your fueled test, and your "calorimetry" depends on some theoretical estimation of temperature-dependent convection losses?

Then there's the temperature-dependent emissivity.

And there's the running for 32 days when you claim to be producing kilo-watts of "excess power"! If that was the case, the world's simplest bomb calorimeter would demonstrate the effect in seconds. So why didn't they build one?

The list goes on.

If a student at a science fair did a project like this as an attempt to create an "open" calorimeter set-up for some legitimate experimental reason I'd give them great credit. If they claimed they used the system and it demonstrated that energy was not conserved... not so much.

Re:if these confirmers are reputable, who are they

[bhlowe]

Read the report. The names are at the top.
Giuseppe Levi - Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
Evelyn Foschi - Bologna, Italy
Bo Höistad, Roland Pettersson and Lars Tegnér - Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden
Hanno Essén - Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Unfortunately, Levi is a long time acquaintance of Rossi, so his independence is hard to justify.

Having read the report - there are problems.

[queazocotal]

The most glaring of which is there was no proper measurement of heat output - just computed from IR output.

Re:Having read the report - there are problems.

[radtea]

They measured the system with a known electrical input and no fuel, calibrated the measurement process showing they were measuring accurately to within a percent or so and then measured again with the fuel in place.

They did nothing of the kind, and if you read the paper you'd know it.

Their "calibration run" was at half-power (which given Stephan-Boltzmann and all is likely about 1/5th temperature) and their "calorimetry" depends on a number of complex temperature-sensitive estimates, so their "calibration" is meaningless.

They excuse themselves from doing a proper full-temperature calibration because they worried the iconel heater wires might melt in the absence of "fuel" which is a bogus and contrived claim.

Any suffiently advanced tech...

[trims]

is indistinguishable from a Rigged Demo. Or in this case, Rossi is counting on the inverse.

We've long been down this road. Rossi refuses to let anyone see how the thing works. He refuses to allow input monitoring (i.e. the Ecat is always plugged into an external power source, and he refuses to allow an ampmeter to be run on it).

He's also never shown the interior of the Ecat, so there's no verification of the fuel being any different between start and finish of the run. In fact, the concentration of Copper isotopes after the run is suspiciously identical to naturally occurring copper.

He's also never explained why there are no gamma radiation dangers, despite the physics which say that if the reaction he claims is going on, anyone within 10 meters for more than a few minutes should die of radiation poisoning.

Really, folks, this nothing more than a charlatan peddling his wares to folks. Any "scientist" who values his reputation shouldn't come with 100 miles of this guy. And shame on Slashdot for even publishing this claim. What, we're next going to entertain claims of people who say they can transform Lead to Gold with only this special black-box machine?

Oh, and ExtremeTech is about as reliable for this kind of reporting as The Daily Mail.

-Erik

Re:Any suffiently advanced tech...

[Charliemopps]

They did run an amp meter on it. Also, they know the power supply he was using and it's standard. They were able to measure all inputs and outputs. It put out more than it took in, by a lot. More than could be accounted for given its mass.

I'm not saying this is real... but when they really do figure out how he tricked them it's going to be really clever I bet.

Re:Any suffiently advanced tech...

[gweihir]

Before, he used an AC-only amp-meter and added DC heating current. As to "standard power supply", it is really easy to rip out all that is in there and replace it, I have done it. He might even have repeated the earlier trick with a manipulated wall-socket, that gives AC _and_ DC. As everybody expects it giving only AC, the DC would be imperceptible unless specifically looked for. And with a little controller over Bluetooth, ZigBee or the like, he could even switch the DC part on and off to hide it better. Or he could put 380V on that socket on demand. Also not hard to do.

Re:Any suffiently advanced tech...

[bhlowe]

No, read the report (before spouting off.) The measuring equipment was not supplied by the inventor. The test was partly funded by the Swedish energy research consortium, Elforsk. The inventor may have had an opportunity to swap out the fuel--but it was running continously at 1100- then 14000C, so it would have difficult to do without causing a blip in the temperature data. The reactor was also a welded closed system and was cut open at the end of the 32 days with all team members present, including Rossi. Yes, maybe he pulled a sleight of hand trick at that moment.. but that doesn't make much sense if it was already agreed that the reaction was beyond chemical.... and could not have happened, even if its entire weight was made out of gasoline, Lithium ion batteries, or TNT.

Re:Any suffiently advanced tech...

[Solozerk]

But the "inventor" hooked up the meter, no?

No. The entire experiment was setup by the researchers themselves; the lab has no connection to Rossi, and none of the equipment came or was set-up by him. His only implication was to be here for the initial "fuel" insertion and the ash retrieval at the end, while being monitored (though that's more than enough to be suspicious of the alleged transmutation and suspect some sort of swap - still, it doesn't explain the excess energy).

Getting to the bottom of it

[fyngyrz]

No. Lobbyists and the lawyers that drive the lobbying process. Congresscritters seem to be almost uniformly clueless.

He tried patenting it...

[trims]

He's tried patenting it in three different jurisdictions:

Italy, the EU, and the US.

The latter two rejected the claim outright, with choice phrases like "seems to violate the understanding of basic physical processes" and "fails to provided enough of a concrete implementation to judge for patentablity", and "application does not describe a workable device".

It got the Italian one, simply because he applied for a non-technical patent, and it was reviewed by someone who merely looked at the form, and didn't analyze the device. It's well-known in Italy that this form of patent is called "God's Gifts", because they're pretty much indistinguishable from miracles in terms of reproducability.

Relying on Trade Secrets for this kind of invention is the #1 indicator of fraud. A proper patent would make him rich beyond his imagination. A Trade Secret is only good for fleecing investors.

-Erik

Re:He tried patenting it...

[Jane Q. Public]

Relying on Trade Secrets for this kind of invention is the #1 indicator of fraud. A proper patent would make him rich beyond his imagination. A Trade Secret is only good for fleecing investors.

But you contradict yourself. If (as you said yourself) that he could not get a patent, then trade secret is his only real protection.

I agree that's not a good way to do it, but if that's all you've got, that's what you do.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[ShanghaiBill]

But you contradict yourself. If (as you said yourself) that he could not get a patent, then trade secret is his only real protection.

He didn't get the patent because he didn't actually describe how the device works. You can't patent a secret, and keep it a secret. The reason he didn't describe how it works is almost certainly because IT DOESN'T WORK. If it is a hoax, everything he is doing would make complete sense. If it is real, then nothing that he is doing makes sense. So someone who is behaving like a fraud, claims to be able to violate the known laws of physics. If anyone wants to bet that this is real, I'll give you 100 to 1 odds that it is not.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[geoskd]

The reason he didn't describe how it works is almost certainly because IT DOESN'T WORK.

Funny but FTFA:

The researchers observed a small E-Cat over 32 days, where it produced net energy of 1.5 megawatt-hours, or âoefar more than can be obtained from any known chemical sources in the small reactor volume.â

That pretty much puts an end to the "doesnt work" crap. As they stated, if it is a hoax, the guy has developed a device that can store and regurgitate energy with a far greater energy density than gasoline. If all it is, is a battery, then by itself it would be worth almost as much as cold fusion, as it can store and produce 600+ horsepower for an hour (1.5MW hours). Thats enough to move a typical passenger vehicle 300+ miles on a power supply the size of a stick of dynamite. If the guy had created a device, of any kind, that can do this, then he has no reason to try to swindle investors in a cold fusion scam, he going to be Elon Musks new best friend for life.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[ShanghaiBill]

the guy has developed a device that can store and regurgitate energy with a far greater energy density than gasoline.

There are plenty of other explanations:
1. There is a hidden power cable
2. He recharges the battery while the researchers go to the toilet
3. He is feeding in power through inductive coupling.
4. Something else I didn't think of.

Look, I went to a magic show in Las Vegas, and I saw a guy make an ELEPHANT appear out of thin air on a raised platform. The audience was in a horse shoe layout, and was viewing the raised platform from 270 degrees. I have absolutely NO IDEA how he made that elephant appear. Yet there is no question in my mind that he didn't really materialize an elephant out of thin air. If someone can pull off that elephant illusion, then faking cold fusion well enough to fool a few researchers should be easy. I don't know exactly how the researchers were fooled, but there should be little doubt that they were.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[Jane Q. Public]

So someone who is behaving like a fraud, claims to be able to violate the known laws of physics. If anyone wants to bet that this is real, I'll give you 100 to 1 odds that it is not.

That's what people said about 2 years ago when this device was first announced. It's later now, and things have changed.

I have read the paper. The methodology seems sound. If the researchers themselves check out for reputation, I would say this is astoundingly good news.

NOBODY here is claiming "to violate the known laws of physics". Nobody. There is nothing here that violates any known physical laws. It's just that nobody had quite managed to make it work yet. It has been known to be theoretically possible for a long time now.

The U.S. Navy has been researching ways to achieve LENR using nickel for many years now. Do you think the Navy is crazy? Do you think it's crazy that a university professor might have discovered a way to do it?

Re:He tried patenting it...

[wierd_w]

NONE of those explain the change in isotope species described in the article. Unless you mean he is somehow beaming concentrated neutrons through some unknown means into the device somehow, or that he is able to somehow completely replace the device with progressively more concentrated populations of heavier isotopes miraculously every time the researchers check.

Occam's razor sometimes shows that the seemingly improbable is actually the most likely explanation.

The actual definition of that particular by-rule, is that the explanation with the least complications (read, elaborate conjectures and weasel wording) is the most likely to be correct.

This device appears to produce power with an energy density many times greater than dynamite, and produces a change in isotope species of the test sample.

At this point, the test for fraud is to determine if the calculated energy released is congruent with the change in the mass energy potential of the sample before and after the experiment. Conservation of energy says that if this device used fusion, or any other nuclear power based reaction to achieve its outcome, then that energy came from mass.

They measured the energy released. Measure the difference in the mass of the sample after the 32day observation period, and compare it against the mass of the sample before the observation period. If the calculated mass value for the energy released + current mass == mass of sample before observation, we have a very difficult thing to account for, because it means the device is plausible.

If they dont match, it means the man is a fraud.

This is a testable point of data that would make fraud detection very easy, and would make people that are quick to point the fraud finger very uncomfortable if found to be true.

If the researchers did not collect this measurement, KNOWING that this device was 'supposed' to produce power via a nuclear energy process, then you have a very good grounds to seriously torpedo their published paper, and recommend additional experiment due to improper testing process. Especially since they have the equipment to measure statistical isotope species in the sample, and knew to test for it.

Granted, the difference in weight for a 140mwh value would be in the picograms or less. That just means that smaller samples with the same reaction process need to be studied so that tinier and more sensitive aparatus can measure any changes-- which would also make the "he switched the samples!" argument more convoluted in such latter experiments.

Of course, the NOT SCIENTIFIC AT ALL approach is to just say "There is no need to conduct that experiment, because it is clearly a fraud!"-- That's the not-science-at-all version of begging the question in a wrapper of appeal to authority fallacy, DRESSED as science.

Science is about observation, and recording data about observation, and making hypotheses that predict future observation. In science, REALITY IS KING. If the experiment has shown that energy was generated, and specific features were measured, but the experiment itself is in question-- the proper course of action is to repeat the experimental protocol in additional laboratories to eliminate the conjectured disqualifying uncontrolled variables cited.

In this case:

Were there any spurrious or anomalous EM readings near the device? (Any "beamed" energy delivered to the device would have to be of this type to interact reliably with electrical energy metering equipment.)

Was the sample ever tampered with? (Repeating the protocol simultaneously in multiple labs around the world to verify the results would exclude this, discounting some brilliantly absurd conspiracy.)

Were the researchers involved in any lucrative scam tactics with the inventor? (again, more independent testing would reveal this.)

So, in all cased, the prescribed course of action to verify definitively that this device is a fraud IS TO DO THE DAMN EXPERIMENT, REPEATEDLY.

THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT KILLED THE ORIG

Re:He tried patenting it...

[Randle_Revar]

The independent reviewers may not be that independent. It is basically the same group that reviewed it back in 2013, and they produced a paper that was promptly ripped apart. I also seem to recall at least one of them is a friend of the inventor...

Re:He tried patenting it...

[delt0r]

That's what people said about 2 years ago when this device was first announced. It's later now, and things have changed.

No it hasn't. These "reputable" scientist are the same scientist that were claiming it works 2 years ago. And they still didn't do anything to improve the experiment. They didn't do any calorimetry, this is not published and would not last an hour in peer review, and its almost exactly what they said last time. Which is "look its hot, its more energy than we put in".

They are soo sloppy in the experimental approach i would give this a fail at high school level. Errors are stated at .01, with no justification or calculation, its just made up! I didn't find details of the power supply, but i guess its a special one from the inventor, another black box if you will, and no mention of checking things like power factor, balance and perhaps a choke or two in case some higher frequency energy is pumped in.

I am going to call it. They are party to the fraud.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[hairykrishna]

I am a physicist. I strongly disagree with your view that the methodology is sound.

The measurement methodology for the 'power out' was not the way I would do it. It effectively comes down to measuring the temperature of the 'reactor', in air, and applying calculations. Temperature is measured via an IR camera. It is filled with many ways that they could mislead themselves. I have personally used such a camera to measure surface temperatures in a high power density accelerator target and it is far from a straightforward enterprise. Why not just load the whole thing into a bomb calorimeter? That's the immediately obvious way to measure what they want to measure.

They do not adequately describe their power input. They start out with 3 phase. There's some kind of power supply box in the chain before the resistors. Who supplied this box? More details on what's actually measured as 'input power' is required. Is a circuit diagram too much to ask for?

The isotope data would be compelling. However, it's clear from the paper that Rossi handled the fuel at loading, removal and possibly at points in between. Substitution would have been trivial.

No radiation was observed. LENR, cold fusion, whatever you want to call it where no radiation is emitted is completely incompatible with all known nuclear physics. The idea that it doesn't violate any known physical laws is nonsense.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[Sqr(twg)]

Here's how I think it was done:

Looking at Figure 4 in the report, we see that input power (current) was measured independently in two places. PCE 830 A meaures current going in to the control system, and PCE 830 B measures current going from the control system to the E-Cat. (Thease mesurements are in agreement, and both show less than 1 kW going in while other measurements show more than 2 kW of heat being generated.)

The placements both PCE 830 units are strange. PCE 830 A doesn't sit directly on the 380 V input from the lab, but instead sits between the control system and a "switch" (dentoted "SW"). Similarly, PCE 830 B doesn't sit directly on the three cables going into the E-Cat. Instead it sits between the control system and "connection boxes" (denoted "C").

Anybody who has used a current clamp knows that you must measure around a single conductor. If you measure around two conductors you get the sum, which can be zero even when a large amount of power is tranferred through the cable. So if any of the wires going from the control system to the "switch" contains two conductors instead of just one, then it is possible to feed current through without it regestering on PCE 830 A. Similarly, if any of the cables going from the control system to a "connection box" contains two conductors, it is possible to send power through without it registering on PCE 830 B. (The cables that come after the connection boxes would be much harder to fake, because they connect to high-temperature Inconel conductors at the end.)

So my guess is that the "control system" contains two separate units. One works exactly as advertised. The other is powered using an extra conductor in one of the cables to the "switch". Its ouput corrent is similarly hidden using extra conductors in the wires coning to the connection boxes.

This second unit is designed to only output power under specific circumstances. (Which is why Rossi himself was controling the experiment.) For example, I found it strange that the temperature of the "dummy" reactor was always much lower than the temperature of the "working" reactor. Maybe that is the trigger.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[tomhath]

NONE of those explain the change in isotope species described in the article

That is the easiest part of all to explain. Rossi himself put the fuel into the device, and Rossi himself removed the "ashes". Why did he need to be the only one who handled the material? That by itself invalidates the entire test.

Re:He tried patenting it...

[Rei]

Oh, hey, just looked it up. Seems that there's wide belief among the skeptics that it works based on a really simple trick: a rigged plug. Inside the plug he's got the ground wire swapped with a live wire. So inside the box he can at will make the power draw seem to disappear, because they're not measuring the ground wire. He's actually refused a million dollar prize from a skeptic who wanted to test his device in a way that would include measuring current from the ground wire. Funny, that. ;)

Also looks like in all of his previous incarnations there were no unusual isotopic concentrations measured in the ash. So funny that all of the sudden after facing that criticism his reactor changes how it works and starts outputting extremely enriched stuff in the "ash". Funny how that works. ;)

Can someone else build one?

[tomhath]

Reproducible results means someone else can build the device and get the same results. Unless that happens it's a hoax.

Re:Can someone else build one?

[Lehk228]

yes, anyone can build a fake cold fusion machine.

They didn't TEST anything...

[trims]

No, they didn't. (Measure all the inputs).

They looked at the instruments set up by Rossi. One of the biggest suspicions is that the Ampmeter is measuring only the current between hot and neutral leads on the input cable, and that the "earth" line is actually being used to supply power.

Once again: they merely observed a device set up by Rossi. They had to take his word that all the instruments were set up correctly, and that they did what he said they did. Even the new round of "testing" isn't actual testing. So there's no verification that it did anything that Rossi said it does.

It's like trusting David Copperfield that his escape box is merely an "ordinary box".

-Erik

Re:They didn't TEST anything...

[Solozerk]

They looked at the instruments set up by Rossi

Nope, that was true in the first test, not this one. None of the instruments came or were set up by Rossi. This test didn't occur in his lab, but in a neutral lab with controlled access. He was however present for the loading of the initial "fuel" and the extraction of the ash at the end of the test (which was stupid, and suspicious - especially given the witnessed isotopic changes in the ash).

Even assuming he did some swap on the ash itself, though, it does not explain the witnessed extra heat output (which even with extremely conservative estimates in the paper sets a CoP at ~3.6).
Now, their calorimetry is far from perfect - there were initial concerns about alumina (the device's main material) transparency to IR, for example; those have been put to rest given the fact that the IR camera used works above 7um wavelengths and at those ranges, transparency isn't an issue. Another concern (stressed by other people above) is the whole way the IR camera itself was calibrated and set-up - however, the IR cam was a new, never before used one, and they simply tested its calibration. Even if the measures are off due to the bad calorimetry, there is no obvious way it could translate into an error of that magnitude without some other obvious signs of it (like crazy differences between the hotter "segments" of the device and others, colder ones). And once again, they made all of their calculation using very conservative estimates and taking into account all margins of error.

As for the researchers themselves, they are far from disreputable (except maybe for Levi in this specific context); they are engaging their reputation by publishing this and one of them, Hanno Essen, is also the head of the Swedish Skeptics Society and has at least some experience in dealing with crackpots and suspicious "revolutionary" inventions.

This does warrant further research; beyond ad hominem attacks on Rossi, I haven't seen any strong critic of the experimental protocol that hasn't been quickly debunked (except for the transmutation thing; that could be explained by Rossi doing some sort of swap. It should be noted that he was watched at all time by several people though).

Lack of understanding, but so what.

[fahrbot-bot]

It is certainly most unsatisfying that these results so far have no convincing theoretical explanation, but the experimental results cannot be dismissed or ignored just because of lack of theoretical understanding.

Men don't really understand woman and women don't really understand men, but we still want to date each other and the results are not always unsatisfying. For fuck's sake, people didn't know how aspirin worked for (how long?) but still took it for pain and headaches simply because it worked (well).

Build one of these things for small-scale production. If it generates net energy, back-date a patent for this guy. I'd rather see some tax dollars going toward trying something that may fail, than paying Congress' to jerk-off for another year playing piss-ant politics.

There is no invention

[sjbe]

Given a choice between making $400k a year (minus operating and maintenance expenses, which we have no idea of) and potentially making billions off an invention, which would you choose?

There is no invention and thus there is no choice. This is no different however than the scam artists who sell courses on how to get rich selling houses or investing in the stock market rather than actually doing it themselves. They know there is no money in actually doing what they are selling but there is money in convincing gullible people to give them money.

I'm just saying that there is no reason to think he's a hoax just based on his business strategy.

Yes there is. I've worked in and with private equity. I've done fund raising for real companies. I know how real companies do this and you can be sure that this is NOT how honest people sell an invention. This is how a scam artist works. If this were real he would be able to march into any private equity firm on the planet and they would absolutely throw money at him after some due diligence.

Re:if these confirmers are reputable, who are they

[mrmagos]

Looks like a lot of Bologna.

I'll see myself out.

Re:No contradiction at all

[Anonymous Coward]

A week before the Wright Brothers first flight, most respectable physicists were deeply skeptical about manned flight. Langley had just dumped his attempt in the Potomac. The Writght Brothers were also very secretive and frightened their invention would be stolen by others, which it eventually was. Until they flew, I doubt they could have gotten a patent. They weren't physicists and I doubt they could have produced a scientific paper to describe how their invention worked, but it did.

Einstein's Nobel was for Photo-electric effect

[Roger W Moore]

This is why he's recognized. E=mc2 is minor. GR is the true genius part.

Einstein's Nobel prize was for the photo-electric effect and not for GR. Einstein could easily have received 4 Nobel prizes: for SR, GR, Photo-electric and his explanation of Brownian motion. This is why he is recognized as a genius, more so than those who actually have won multiple Nobels.

Re:Einstein's Nobel was for Photo-electric effect

[Jane Q. Public]

I am becoming increasingly curious why there appears to be a higher than normal rate of errors and repetition in this particular comment thread. However, I freely admit that my stated perception of that error rate is clearly a speculative utterance in the absence of a much greater volume of sample data.

The problem is Slashdot itself. Replies are shown in a linear fashion but they are made (of course) in chronological fashion.

So if GP didn't notice that his parent made a further comment down below, and replied to a reply to this one, the previous comments were missed. And it isn't particularly GP's fault. It's just the way Slashdot reads.

Now, that does also depend somewhat on your settings in Slashdot, but many people don't even know they exist, much less the (rather enormous) effect they can have on how comments are presented.

Which is why I leave the settings mostly alone. That way I see Slashdot the way most other people do.

Re:Einstein's Nobel was for Photo-electric effect

[Sun]

To the best of my knowledge, no one has won multiple Nobels in a single field.

Okay, after checking that statement, it is not true. Frederick Sanger has won two Nobel prizes in Chemistry. He won it alone, in 1958, "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin", and again in 1980, with Walter Gilbert, "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids" (source).

It seems to me that the Nobel committee does not like to award the same prize twice. I think, had Frederick done the nucleic research on his own, he would not have won the second one. I think the committee only awarded him the second prize because not doing so would have denied Walter Gilbert the prize (and awarding only Walter a prize for joint work would be strange).

In that respect, Einstein got only one Nobel because he did his research alone.

Shachar

Hoax? Or not?

[Immerman]

On the other hand at under half a kg even if the entire device was some sort of chemical fuel generating an excess megawatt-hour of energy would imply an energy density in excess of 7200MJ/kg. Compare that to the ~50MJ/kg of various petroleum distillates, or 140MJ/kg for hydrogen - the excess energy is far in excess of chemical sources. That leaves a few options to my mind:
1) The device actually works (which, yes, implies that our understanding of fusion is incomplete and sir hoax-a-lot actually has something real this time)
2) There's hidden low-neutron emission fissionable material in the device and it's actually a compact radiothermic generator producing ~1.3kWh in some manner that can be varied with electrical input. (which would likely be an incredibly valuable and physics-busting invention in it's own right)
3) It's doing something to hide the fact that it's actually drawing 3x as much power as is being measured
4) Actual heat emissions are 3x lower than the values calculated from the surface temperature.

Those are the only options that I see. I would have been much happier if they had done a proper calorimeter test with a high-speed oscilloscope monitoring the incoming power, but as skeptical as I am this is starting to look like it just might be the real thing.

Since you are using occam's razor

[aepervius]

occam's razor is that just as with the first "independent" check this was actually not independent at all, was in Rossi lab with Rossi condition, and Rossi could have simply ordered some specific isotope and mixed it to make it looks like the ratio changed.
 
A true independent test is made in a lab own premise, with a machine they can watch and look for, and rossi not getting his finger on it at any point. THAT is an independent test. What we got is a second circus show. Oh sorry I meant "independent test". With big scary quotes.