Has anyone ever asked the guy what he wants? Does he want a lot of money? Does he want fame? He's already got notoriety. Accolades? The guy has to want something.
There's the outside possibility that he's deluded rather than a scammer, that is, he actually believes in his "invention" and is unconsciously fiddling it so that it works, and he will be seen as the new Messiah.
He's certainly not acting like a serious scientist or inventor.
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.
Or he could, you know, produce an independently verifiable working production model
Then release the details for free on the web, and become the most famous human being on the
planet.
I seriously doubt he'd then die starving and alone in a ditch.
This, a thousand times over. Having a "free energy" machine, if it existed, would be like owning a machine that printed money.
A "free energy" machine and "cold fusion" are two different things.
"Free energy" and "very, very cheap energy" are indeed two different things, in the way that "infinite wealth" is not the same thing as "being a multi-trillionaire".
I've pitched investors on a variety of ideas. Investors would absolutely NOT throw money at someone claiming to have a cold fusion device. They would laugh in his face and show him the door (and rightfully so). Bringing in independent experts (under an NDA) is quite a logical first step before asking for money.
No, GP put in the caveat that due diligence would need to be done before any money throwing began. This would clearly involve proof that the device actually worked.
That's why power production should be nationalised. (Yes, I'm from the UK, not the US).
It makes no sense for it to be a source of profit generation. This would be especially true if this thing actually worked and electricity became ridiculously cheap and plentiful, as presumably the power companies could only make a profit by creating some form of illegal cartel and over-charging.
If local communities wanted to make and distribute their own power as opposed to using the almost free National Grid, that should be up to them, it doesn't seem like a case where choice would have a great deal of meaning.
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.
You don't keep it secret, you patent it, by building a working model and demonstating it. Aside from any wishy washy concerns about the common good of humanity, it is as you say impossible to stop people reverse-engineering things.
Personally, I'd nationalise the invention and give the bloke a nice pension if the fucking thing worked.
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?
But as GP pointed out, it wouldn't be $400K a year. It would be $400K in year 1, followed by more or less exponential growth, even if he was just left alone to get on with it.
In actual fact, if it worked, someone would notice after a pretty short amount of time, and buy him up.
What's NOT going to happen is that someone reads one review saying it appears to work (but with no explanation how) and gives him forty seven squazillion dollars up front.
Except that it allegedly needs a very expensive isotope of nickel, which costs far more than the cost of the electricity produced. Thus he needs money!
So not only is it scientifically dubious, it's economically pointless.
For anyone taking this seriously, I'm a Nigerian prince whose father used to be the Minister for Gold, and I have a ton of it hidden in my back garden just waiting for someone to help fund its removal to Switzerland.
China will almost certainly nationalize it (independent of where it was invented) and put it online to power the country.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Apart from anti-socialist and pro-market bias, why should an invention that could revolutionise society be left in the hands of a single inventor? Why should anyone make any profit out of it at all?
Isn't this analogous to the idea of free software, i.e. things which are freely copiable and shareable should be freely copied and shared? Why should there be an equivalent of a 1990s Microsoft controlling this technology?
Rossi's time in prison was due to uncleared allegations of tax fraud and toxic waste mishandling, which even if true would have little to do with this story. Crying "felon" looks a bit too close to a disingenuous smear tactic in this case.
Tax fraud would have a lot to do with a story about a hoax/scam for financial gain. Sounds like a similar type of miindset to me.
As an aside, it's worth noting that many people who have been to prison are quite intelligent, and extended periods of confinement can provide plenty of time for thought (invention).
Plenty of time to stew in your own sense of self-entitlement and plan how to fool some greedy and gullible mug punters, more like.
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...
Ha, I just read this comment after I'd posted that the most likely explanation was collusion...
I remember reading someone saying that the most likely explanation of a "true life ghost story" is simply that the person telling it is lying.
Occam's razor sometimes shows that the seemingly improbable is actually the most likely explanation.
No, Occam's razor would suggest to me that the simplest explanation is (a) errors in measurement, then (b) collusion by the reviewers, followed by (c) some sort of sleight of hand/magic trick by the inventor, and finally (d) that it is actually cold fusion with no current scientific explanation.
Of course populating the mission with the wing suit contingent might have other unexpected effects...
I've always thought that anyone who would choose to go on a one way trip to live in a Portakabin, eating algae and breathing other people's recycled farts should be locked up for their own safety. But here on Earth, where it wouldn't cost so much.
And most challenging of all, how are you going to convince people they should abandon their pleasant life to take up farming in Antarctic bunkers? There's no frontier there worth colonizing, no new horizons, no grand dream to inspire them to commit to a lifetime of hardships - you're just asking them to do a bunch of farming in the least-hospitable place on the planet in order to satisfy your curiosity.
I really do not get the "frontier" thing at all. Going to Mars would condemn you to a life in a roofed prison with a view of dull red rock.
At least in Antarctica you can breathe the air and see some wildlife and spectacular scenery. Plus you can fly home in a day or so if something horrible happens.
Not that I'm a fan of going to Mars anyway; it's expensive enough getting out of Earth's gravity well so why waste all that effort just to dive back down into another (especially if you are going to end up living in a tin can anyway)?
Exactly. What is the point of living on a planet when you can't breathe its atmosphere or survive outside without a space suit anyway?
It all comes back to energy. How much energy does it take to first supply and then sustain the colony.
Or, to put it another way, money.
We don't have unlimited energy, or money. If we could start up a colony with one rocket's worth of people, a month's food supply and some shovels, fair enough.
It's the cost of continual supply that's troublesome, especially if all we end up with is the knowledge on how to sustain a small colony at vast expense.
The definition of a troll is not "someone who says something I don't like, and in a slightly facetious way".
I find "Space Nutters" to be a reasonable description for people who simply will not accept scientific and technical reality, and especially for those people who would apparently condemn themselves to a one way ticket to Mars.
It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
Antenna's are great for breaking news, particularly when it is breaking world news happening in your back yard. My personal example is when a space shuttle happens to break up above where you live and is raining down around you.
If I was being bombarded with burning chunks of metal raining from the sky, I don't think my first reaction would be "ooh, better turn on the TV to see what's happening".
Slashdot Mirror
Has anyone ever asked the guy what he wants? Does he want a lot of money? Does he want fame? He's already got notoriety. Accolades? The guy has to want something.
There's the outside possibility that he's deluded rather than a scammer, that is, he actually believes in his "invention" and is unconsciously fiddling it so that it works, and he will be seen as the new Messiah.
He's certainly not acting like a serious scientist or inventor.
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.
Or he could, you know, produce an independently verifiable working production model
Then release the details for free on the web, and become the most famous human being on the planet.
I seriously doubt he'd then die starving and alone in a ditch.
This, a thousand times over. Having a "free energy" machine, if it existed, would be like owning a machine that printed money.
A "free energy" machine and "cold fusion" are two different things.
"Free energy" and "very, very cheap energy" are indeed two different things, in the way that "infinite wealth" is not the same thing as "being a multi-trillionaire".
I've pitched investors on a variety of ideas. Investors would absolutely NOT throw money at someone claiming to have a cold fusion device. They would laugh in his face and show him the door (and rightfully so). Bringing in independent experts (under an NDA) is quite a logical first step before asking for money.
No, GP put in the caveat that due diligence would need to be done before any money throwing began. This would clearly involve proof that the device actually worked.
I don't need to build a silicon chip production plant in my garden shed if I can buy chips for fifty quid.
It makes no sense for it to be a source of profit generation. This would be especially true if this thing actually worked and electricity became ridiculously cheap and plentiful, as presumably the power companies could only make a profit by creating some form of illegal cartel and over-charging.
If local communities wanted to make and distribute their own power as opposed to using the almost free National Grid, that should be up to them, it doesn't seem like a case where choice would have a great deal of meaning.
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.
You don't keep it secret, you patent it, by building a working model and demonstating it. Aside from any wishy washy concerns about the common good of humanity, it is as you say impossible to stop people reverse-engineering things.
Personally, I'd nationalise the invention and give the bloke a nice pension if the fucking thing worked.
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?
But as GP pointed out, it wouldn't be $400K a year. It would be $400K in year 1, followed by more or less exponential growth, even if he was just left alone to get on with it.
In actual fact, if it worked, someone would notice after a pretty short amount of time, and buy him up.
What's NOT going to happen is that someone reads one review saying it appears to work (but with no explanation how) and gives him forty seven squazillion dollars up front.
Except that it allegedly needs a very expensive isotope of nickel, which costs far more than the cost of the electricity produced. Thus he needs money!
So not only is it scientifically dubious, it's economically pointless.
For anyone taking this seriously, I'm a Nigerian prince whose father used to be the Minister for Gold, and I have a ton of it hidden in my back garden just waiting for someone to help fund its removal to Switzerland.
China will almost certainly nationalize it (independent of where it was invented) and put it online to power the country.
You say that like it's a bad thing.
Apart from anti-socialist and pro-market bias, why should an invention that could revolutionise society be left in the hands of a single inventor? Why should anyone make any profit out of it at all?
Isn't this analogous to the idea of free software, i.e. things which are freely copiable and shareable should be freely copied and shared? Why should there be an equivalent of a 1990s Microsoft controlling this technology?
Rossi's time in prison was due to uncleared allegations of tax fraud and toxic waste mishandling, which even if true would have little to do with this story. Crying "felon" looks a bit too close to a disingenuous smear tactic in this case.
Tax fraud would have a lot to do with a story about a hoax/scam for financial gain. Sounds like a similar type of miindset to me.
As an aside, it's worth noting that many people who have been to prison are quite intelligent, and extended periods of confinement can provide plenty of time for thought (invention).
Plenty of time to stew in your own sense of self-entitlement and plan how to fool some greedy and gullible mug punters, more like.
It appears this charlatan with his impossible device may cause us to redefine what is possible.
Yes, if it works. A small group of people saying "it looks like it works, but we don't know how" is not exactly overwhelming evidence of this fact.
I don't see that it would be that expensive or time consuming for a few independent Universities to test this properly.
Ah yes, the "they laughed at Einstein" argument popular with kooks everywhere.
The U.S. Navy has been researching ways to achieve LENR using nickel for many years now. Do you think the Navy is crazy?
In the 1960s, the CIA experimented with telepathy and thought control. Lots of things are worth investigating, that doesn't mean they're possible.
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...
Ha, I just read this comment after I'd posted that the most likely explanation was collusion...
I remember reading someone saying that the most likely explanation of a "true life ghost story" is simply that the person telling it is lying.
Occam's razor sometimes shows that the seemingly improbable is actually the most likely explanation.
No, Occam's razor would suggest to me that the simplest explanation is (a) errors in measurement, then (b) collusion by the reviewers, followed by (c) some sort of sleight of hand/magic trick by the inventor, and finally (d) that it is actually cold fusion with no current scientific explanation.
Of course populating the mission with the wing suit contingent might have other unexpected effects...
I've always thought that anyone who would choose to go on a one way trip to live in a Portakabin, eating algae and breathing other people's recycled farts should be locked up for their own safety. But here on Earth, where it wouldn't cost so much.
He was using "religious" in the sense of "based on faith, rather than science" not specifically Christian/Muslim, or whatever.
And most challenging of all, how are you going to convince people they should abandon their pleasant life to take up farming in Antarctic bunkers? There's no frontier there worth colonizing, no new horizons, no grand dream to inspire them to commit to a lifetime of hardships - you're just asking them to do a bunch of farming in the least-hospitable place on the planet in order to satisfy your curiosity.
I really do not get the "frontier" thing at all. Going to Mars would condemn you to a life in a roofed prison with a view of dull red rock.
At least in Antarctica you can breathe the air and see some wildlife and spectacular scenery. Plus you can fly home in a day or so if something horrible happens.
Not that I'm a fan of going to Mars anyway; it's expensive enough getting out of Earth's gravity well so why waste all that effort just to dive back down into another (especially if you are going to end up living in a tin can anyway)?
Exactly. What is the point of living on a planet when you can't breathe its atmosphere or survive outside without a space suit anyway?
It all comes back to energy. How much energy does it take to first supply and then sustain the colony.
Or, to put it another way, money.
We don't have unlimited energy, or money. If we could start up a colony with one rocket's worth of people, a month's food supply and some shovels, fair enough.
It's the cost of continual supply that's troublesome, especially if all we end up with is the knowledge on how to sustain a small colony at vast expense.
Mars should have loads of water
Probably a good idea to find out before we dispatch the first brave colonists.
I know you're trolling
The definition of a troll is not "someone who says something I don't like, and in a slightly facetious way".
I find "Space Nutters" to be a reasonable description for people who simply will not accept scientific and technical reality, and especially for those people who would apparently condemn themselves to a one way ticket to Mars.
It's so loaded with fake, unbelievable nonsense it's not even watchable. In episode one, they were racing a ferrari or a lambo or something underneath a jumbo jet, so that they jumbo jet could drop an ethernet cable down to a waiting hot chick who inserted it into a laptop. 2 seconds later they had magically retrieve a backup of the communication software for the fucking air traffic control towers. Which they then uploaded to every air traffic control tower in the country so they can FINALLY land all those planes.
I bet you loved McGyver...
Antenna's are great for breaking news, particularly when it is breaking world news happening in your back yard. My personal example is when a space shuttle happens to break up above where you live and is raining down around you.
If I was being bombarded with burning chunks of metal raining from the sky, I don't think my first reaction would be "ooh, better turn on the TV to see what's happening".