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Bill Gates Sponsoring Palladium-Based LENR Technology

Baldrson writes Kitco.com reports that: "Low energy nuclear reactor (LENR) technology, and by extension palladium, is attracting the attention of one of the richest men in the world and a pioneer inventor of new technology... In a recent visit to Italy, billionaire business man, investor and inventor Bill Gates said that for several years he has been a believer in the idea of LENR, and is a sponsor of companies developing the technology... During his trip to Italy he visited the national agency for new technologies energy and sustainable economic development (ENEA) where scientists have made significant progress towards a working design for low energy nuclear fusion. The centerpiece of their design is the same as in Mitsubishi's, palladium. Creating palladium foil with just the right parameters, and managing stress levels in the material was a key issue, one that the researchers at EMEA were able to resolve several years ago."

8 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. LENR is not fusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    LENR means Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, and is most decidedly NOT fusion; the coulomb barrier is not applicable. The mechanism is completely different, the best theory so far is that of Widom-Larsen which explains it using Ultra Low Momentum neutrons. See http://news.newenergytimes.net for details, for the theory http://newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml .

    1. Re:LENR is not fusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can change a nucleus other than by merging with another. The Widom-Larsen theory is (as I understand it) that a proton on a metal surface is converted (forced by combined forces of groups of electrons) into a neutron by combining with an electron, and that this no-speed neutron is then easily captured by a nearby nucleus, changing its isotope number. So e.g. nickel would stay nickel but have an extra neutron. This could happens a second time for the same nucleus. If then one of the extra neutrons is converted into a proton, you get the next-higher element in the periodic table, so you have transmutation. Because there is no joining of a proton to an existing nucleus, the coulomb barrier is not relevant; it is exactly that barrier which nuclear fusion must overcome with high energy like laser (see https://lasers.llnl.gov/), or tokamak reactor (e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_European_Torus).

  2. Re:Rossi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Back then in 2012 it was already clear Rossi had nothing. In the mean time we got 2 crappy report from his friends at bologna university & lund (so not independendent) and both were rife of so many error as to be laughable. The last one had Rossi remove the "ashes" which turned out to be something else altogether than previously found, and was Ni 62.... By coincidence Rossi had bought Ni 62 a bit before but that was for "calibration" wink wink.
    Bottom line : forget Rossi. There is a good reason he does not go for full disclosure (patent - you can't keep a secret sauce hidden - which is why all his attempt of patent were refused I think they were for the show as any good IP lawyer would have told Rossi you have to fully disclose everything to pattent) and had ZERO truly independent verification.
     
      as for the state of LENR... Well let us say after an initial enthiusiam I am by now extremly warry of any purported progress , as so far nothing has been reproducible convincingly.

  3. Re:Palladium foil with just the right parameters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    "Just the right properties" is not really needed. Simple gas pressure can overcome the need for specially prepared palladium. That is, the classic CF experiments were done at ordinary atmospheric pressure, so it takes a long time for the deuterium to permeate the palladium and, yes, apparently the palladium's molecular structure is important in helping CF to happen (if it happens at all). However, if you simply take a piece of palladium and put it in a pressure chamber, and pump in lots of deuterium gas under pressure, well, not only does it take less time for something interesting to happen, the results are highly repeat-able. Here are some links: old internal NASA paper, a formal journal publication, and a 2010 overview.

  4. Re:"pioneer inventor of new technology" ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sub-pixel rendering was invented by Apple. Microsoft only patented there implementation called ClearType, which uses 3 sub-pixels instead of 2 sub-pixels, and is carefully worded around the existing Apple patent. The Apple patent is referenced in the Microsoft patent.

  5. Technically Illiterate by Capt.Albatross · · Score: 3, Informative

    The 'Tech Metals Insider' article contains a link to what it describes as another of its articles on Low Energy Nuclear Reactors, but it is actually about the hohlraums used in some inertial-confinement laser fusion research. The author is apparently unaware that this is a very different technology, and so cannot be regarded as a reliable guide on the subject.

  6. Re:"pioneer inventor of new technology" ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am willing to go out on a limb and quote a lot more than that:

    1: Active Directory. Yes, it is Kerberos compatible, but it is the only infrastructure that can scale to millions, if not billions of users. OpenLDAP can't do more than just domains, and businesses need trees and forests for their organizational structure.

    2: Exchange. IBM and Google are exceptions since they eat their own dog food, but every other big company has their messaging on Exchange.

    3: GPOs. Try to manage thousands of desktops with another management system. Good luck.

    4: BitLocker. It may not be as "cool" as TrueCrypt, but it not just has security, but flexibility to deal with eDiscovery rules in the enterprise.

    5: Storage Spaces and ReFS. Linux still does not have a production filesystem that can detect and correct bit rot.

    6: DHCP. MS invented this because there wasn't anything that was even comparable. BOOTP for thousands of desktops? Yeah, right.

    7: IPSec. MS didn't invent it, but they did make a working implementation.

    8: Offline file deduplication on the filesystem level. Still no other mainstream OS has this functionality. Yes, there are hacks that do this, but we are meaning production here, where deduplication on a share with backups on it can save a lot of space.

    9: SMB. With SMB v3, one checkbox enables encryption for shares. NFS has come a long way, but nowhere near as secure, and V4 requires Kerberos for user functionality.

    10: ActiveSync. It doesn't matter what the device is, if it hooks to Exchange, it can be remotely wiped. This functionality has been around longer than iOS or Android.

  7. Re:Rossi by Baloroth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Who published this "study" and how was it peer reviewed?

    I'd guess Snake Oil Monthly, peer reviewed by "homeopathic scientists". Obviously. Or (since Rossi is a tiny bit subtler than that... though only a tiny bit) the """Journal of Nuclear Physics"""*, which (in a startling coincidence) is "published" by Rossi himself (if posting something to a blog counts as published). It may well have been peer reviewed, but of course since Rossi is a fraudster, not a scientist, the peers in this case... well, lets just say they probably have more of a theoretical degree in physics than a degree in theoretical physics.

    *As a side note, this is a good example of why simply because something was "published" in a respected-sounding journal does not mean it's actually trustworthy. I could form the American Journal of Renowned Physics Breakthroughs tomorrow and publish the flimsiest of flim-flam in it. Anyone could.

    --
    "None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton