Cold Fusion on CBS TV's "60 Minutes" Sunday
JohnnyCJohnny
by Steven B. Krivit
Editor, New Energy Times
April 16, 2009
[This article is Copyleft 2009 New Energy Times. Permission is granted
to reproduce this article as long as the article, this notice and the
publication information pare included in their entirety and no changes
are made to this article.]
Low-energy nuclear reactions, historically known as "cold fusion,"
will get their 12 minutes of fame on CBS TV's "60 Minutes" Sunday at 7
p.m. Eastern Standard Time in a program titled "Cold Fusion Is Hot
Again."
This is the second TV program on “cold fusion” to run within the last
few weeks. “Brink,” a show on Discovery’s Science Channel, ran an
episode called “Cold Fusion Cracked?” that aired March 27.
According to “Brink” guest Dwight Williams - introduced as a senior
science adviser with the U.S. Department of Energy - there might, in
fact, be something real about all of this - that is, real science,
real hope and, quite possibly, a real source of energy.
Jean Paul Biberian, a French researcher who has been working on LENR
for 20 years, was quoted many years ago saying, "It's history in the
making, what we are living through here."
The battle for credibility and redemption for the field has been long
and hard-fought. German physicist Max Planck predicted the nature of
such scientific revolutions.
"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents
and making them see the light," Planck wrote, "but rather because its
opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is
familiar with it."
Almost poetically, John Maddox, the editor of Nature magazine and
prominent opinion leader in the academic battle to dismiss "cold
fusion" outright, died Sunday. He was widely quoted for his comment,
"Broadly speaking, it’s dead, and it'll remain dead for a long, long
time," referring to "cold fusion."
Three weeks ago, researchers from Space and Naval Warfare Systems
Center (SPAWAR) Pacific made headlines with unambiguous evidence of
nuclear particle emissions from their LENR experiments. The group has
been working, mostly quietly, on LENR for 20 years.
Representatives from a "cold fusion" laboratory, Energetics
Technologies LLC of Califon, N.J., tipped CBS off a year ago that
"cold fusion" research was still alive. Rick Kramer told New Energy
Times that he handles "media management" for Energetics.
CBS has kept a tight lid on the exact nature and angle of the story it
will run, though it is expected to investigate the most controversial
aspect of "cold fusion," excess heat.
The "cold fusion" discovery is attributed to electrochemists Martin
Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, when they were at the University of
Utah. They and university administrators Chase Peterson and Jim Brophy
announced the discovery in a press conference March 23, 1989.
Fleischmann and Pons had noticed more heat being produced from their
electrochemical cell than could be explained by any known chemical
process. The amount of energy, in the form of heat, was in the range
of nuclear energy, but none of the typical harmful side effects of
conventional nuclear energy was apparent.
CBS approached three U.S. government agencies that are doing LENR
research: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the Naval
Research Laboratory; and the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in
San Diego.
New Energy Times has learned that representatives from all three
agencies spoke with CBS but turned down CBS' request to go on camera.
Frank Gordon, with SPAWAR, told New Energy Times that his group
prefers to maintain a lower profile and stick to the peer-reviewed
journals and science conferences.
New Energy Times learned that SRI International permitted
electrochemist Michael McKubre, director of the Energy Research Center
at SRI International, in Menlo Park, Calif., to appear on camera.
McKubre and Energetics Technologies' founder Irving Dardik, inventor
of a proprietary triggering waveform, are part of a consortium that
completed a series of replications several years ago that enhances the
LENR excess-heat effect.
Irving Dardik, chief visionary officer of Energetics Technologies LLC
Photo: S.B. Krivit
Energetics has produced an excellent animation to depict much of what
LENR researchers understand about the loading of deuterium into a
palladium lattice. However, the animation's mention of fusion as the
explanatory process and energy release of exactly 24 MeV is highly
speculative.
Energetics Technologies Video Animation
Alternatively, researchers Allan Widom and Lewis Larsen speculate that
a weak interaction process rather than a fusion process is responsible
for the generation of excess heat, heavy element transmutation and the
production of helium and neutrons seen in LENR research.
The consortium’s experiments, funded in part by DARPA, produced 10
percent to 300 percent more energy than they consumed in 12 of 23
experiments. Their work was published last year in the peer-reviewed
American Chemical Society "Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions Sourcebook,"
by Oxford University Press.
CBS asked Robert Duncan, vice chancellor for research at the
University of Missouri and an expert in low-temperature physics, to
look into the LENR research. Duncan was referred to CBS by Allen
Goldman, the head of the condensed matter physics group at the
American Physical Society.
Duncan comes with strong credentials: a fellow and life member of the
American Physical Society, the chair of the Instrumentation and
Measurement Topical Group for the American Physical Society in 2002,
the Gordon and Betty Moore Distinguished Scholar at Caltech in 2004
and 2005 and more.
Caltech has earned a place in "cold fusion" history as the breeding
ground of contempt for the discovery. Its theoretical physicist Steven
E. Koonin was quick to denounce Fleischmann and Pons as incompetent
and delusional. Koonin is the chief scientist for BP and recently was
appointed the U.S. Department of Energy undersecretary for the Office
of Science.
Duncan spent several weeks (on his own time) investigating LENR in
October. CBS paid his travel expenses to meet with researchers at
Energetics' laboratory in Omer, Israel, and observe a working LENR
excess-heat experiment. Duncan emphasized to New Energy Times his
objectivity of and independence from the research.
"‘60 Minutes’ asked the American Physical Society for a reference for
someone like myself who’s done very careful measurements in related
fields but not specifically in LENR," Duncan said. "I've never been
involved in any 'cold fusion' research in the past, nor am I involved
in any now."
Duncan also met with researchers at NRL in Washington, D.C., and the
SPAWAR researchers when they were in Salt Lake City at the American
Chemical Society meeting in March.
He was skeptical of the LENR excess heat before his investigation. New
Energy Times spoke with Duncan today.
"I had not studied ‘cold fusion’ before, so I had no idea that these
excess-heat results were real," Duncan said. "I had heard the
controversy back in 1989, and from that, I was suspect of the entire
field.
"Sam Hornblower of CBS asked me to read some papers and talk to some
of the scientists, and it quickly became clear to me that it was a
very interesting result. After I saw some of the hardware, I had a
chance to ask about the experimental configurations and dig in deeper,
and now I am convinced that this excess-heat effect is real."
Duncan was particularly impressed with the SPAWAR research because of
its clear evidence for nuclear reactions.
"I had a chance to see their results in detail in Salt Lake City
during the American Chemical Society meeting, and I was very
impressed," he said. "The CR-39 particle tracks look as though they
show much of what is expected from nuclear reactions inside these
materials, so I think this is a very exciting development."
Richard Garwin, a prominent U.S. physicist, was interviewed for the
"60 Minutes" piece and was asked about his views on the LENR excess
heat, though Garwin did not visit the Omer laboratory. He had visited
the SRI laboratory many years ago and secretly reported to the
Pentagon that SRI had correctly measured significant levels of LENR
excess heat.
"The uncertainty in excess power measurement is about 50 milliwatts,"
Garwin wrote, "but the excess power appears to be on the order of 500
milliwatts or even 1 watt peak...we note that a chemical reaction
involving the palladium at perhaps 1.5 eV per atom would correspond to
about 3.5 kJ of heat; this is to be compared with the 3 Mj [One
thousand times greater] of 'excess heat' observed, so such an excess
could not possibly be of chemical origin."
Publicly, however, Garwin has yet to recognize the validity of LENR
excess heat.
Sources told New Energy Times that CBS went to Frascati, Italy, to get
footage from the ENEA Frascati laboratory, the Italian Agency for New
Energy. Of the 300 researchers at ENEA Frascati, two-thirds perform
"hot" fusion research.
"Report 41" Italian "Cold Fusion" Documentary (Courtesy RAI-TV Italy)
But some of the Frascati researchers work, or have worked, on LENR,
too. Antonella De Ninno, a biophysicist who spoke at the 3rd
International New Energy Technology Symposium at the ACS National
Meeting March 22-27, 2009, was part of a team that performed seminal
research on temporally correlated heat and helium-4 production from
LENR experiments. De Ninno was also asked by ACS to speak about the
research at the March 23, 2009, news conference. (Video Segment 1)
(Video Segment 2)
Although De Ninno is no longer funded to perform LENR research in the
highly competitive field, another researcher, Vittorio Violante, who
is part of the consortium with SRI International and Energetics
Technologies, has been able to continue LENR research at ENEA Frascati
on limited funding. An Italian news story states that Violante has
received funding form the U.S. Department of Energy, though New Energy
Times does not have independent confirmation of this.
Sources also told New Energy Times that CBS went to the United Kingdom
to get footage of cold fusion co-discoverer Martin Fleischmann, as
well. The other discoverer, B. Stanley Pons, has remained out of the
spotlight.
Many mysteries about LENR research remain. One mystery about the "60
Minutes" program - which may or may not be solved Sunday - is the
effect on the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office. How have they responded to this new area of research
and potential technology?
Another mystery is the future of the hot-fusion programs. In France,
the world's largest magnetic doughnut will be built soon. Only the
International Space Station has exceeded the cost of the hot-fusion
doughnut as the world's most expensive science project, at least $20
billion spent so far with another $20 billion committed.
In California, the National Ignition Facility recently announced
progress with its inertial confinement fusion developments. Its
experiment will use the world's most powerful array of lasers. NIF's
primary mission is for nuclear weapons, but it's been sold to the
American public as a possible future energy source.
In 2006, New Energy Times asked Craig Smith, a senior scientist with
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, about the progress of NIF as
an energy source. Smith evaded the question.
"My understanding is that, by the year 2010 or so," he said, "there
will be some experimental applications that will give us important
answers concerning the viability of inertial confinement fusion as an
energy source."
At the International Conference on Emerging Nuclear Energy Sciences in
2007 in Istanbul, Turkey, Edward Moses, associate director of Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory, answered questions from scientists
about the feasibility of NIF as an energy source.
One member of the audience asked Moses how much energy NIF would
create, but Moses initially evaded the question. He first explained
how much energy the device would consume. When the questioner asked
him directly to state how much net energy would be generated, Moses
said that was not the point.
"NIF should be looked at as an exploration to learn more about fusion,
not as an energy-producing experiment," he said.
Moses said that overall efficiency "from the wall plug" to release of
energy from the laser reaction was expected to be only 20 percent of
the input power, in the foreseeable future.
On March 10, NIF broke a world record for a laser fusion facility as
its array consumed 1.1 million joules of electricity, most likely
generated by a coal-fired or a nuclear fission plant somewhere in the
distance.
"This is an incredible milestone on our journey to ignition," Moses
said. "It was a great night that was the culmination of 15 years of
incredible work by the entire NIF team. We are well on our way to
achieving what we set out to do: controlled, sustained nuclear fusion
and energy gain."
Jim Bono, director of public affairs for the Lawrence Livermore
National Laboratory, confirmed to New Energy Times today that NIF gets
its energy from the commercial power grid.
Thermonuclear fusion: 58 years, $40 billion, 80 percent energy loss.
Low-energy nuclear reactions: 20 years, a few million dollars, 10
percent to 300 percent energy gain, production of a few watts.
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/news/2009/60MinutesTurnsUptheHeat.shtml
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I have spent many hours over the years (15 or so) in
sci.physics.fusion debating whether cold fusion is real or not with
some ardent skeptics of cold fusion. I just want to share these
latest developments. It is nice to be vindicated for my support of
cold fusion research all of these years. It looks like cold fusion is
in the process of going mainstream. Naysayers remain, but if they
can't see the writing on the wall, then that is there problem. Even
Uncle Sam is researching cold fusion nowadays.
Marvin the Martian
> I have spent many hours over the years (15 or so) in sci.physics.fusion
> debating whether cold fusion is real or not with some ardent skeptics of
> cold fusion. I just want to share these latest developments. It is
> nice to be vindicated for my support of cold fusion research all of
> these years. It looks like cold fusion is in the process of going
> mainstream. Naysayers remain, but if they can't see the writing on the
> wall, then that is there problem. Even Uncle Sam is researching cold
> fusion nowadays.
You know, there are still people who post that Einstein's SR was a fraud.
That's because they don't understand it. It doesn't stop them from
getting their ego kicks by insulting Einstein and everyone who
understands SR.
You just ignore them and pick up. Cold fusion is real, but not well
understood. You can't argue with experiment.
Richard Tobin
JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of
>cold fusion research all of these years.
Let us know when the water heater works.
-- Richard
--
Please remember to mention me / in tapes you leave behind.
Bill Snyder
Tobin) wrote:
>In article <08413c1f-3b73-47ef...@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
>JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>
>>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of
>>cold fusion research all of these years.
>
>Let us know when the water heater works.
You know how plumbers never show up when they said they'd be
there. Admittedly, 20 years and counting seems excessive, but
maybe the one who do CF have a really strong union.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
JohnnyCJohnny
> In article <08413c1f-3b73-47ef-9ac5-dde73baef...@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
How unscientific of you. Let me know when there are any practicle
uses for subatomic particles. We research since to understand nature
not to produce water heaters, those consumer products are byproducts
of scientific research. I still can't believe that cold fusion is
finally gaining mainstream acceptance because the experimental
evidence is becoming overwhelming. The skeptics will be looking more
and more like flat earthers as cold fusion goes mainstream.
Bill Snyder
Wanna bet some money?
JohnnyCJohnny
>
> - Show quoted text -
Bet on what? It's over, even the U.S. government is researching cold
fusion. If you can't see the writing on the wall, then that's is your
problem. The world will change with our without you. Just wait until
some real money pours into cold fusion research. I've read over the
years that some aspects of corporate America were quietly researching
cold fusion. I bet those efforts are going to ramp up, as will the
U.S. government's efforts.
Bill Snyder
<joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
Wanna bet some money? A simple "Yes, I do," or "No, thanks, I'll
just keep on mouthing off and wimping out, same as I've been doing
for years now" will do.
Marvin the Martian
> In article
> <08413c1f-3b73-47ef...@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
> JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>
>>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of cold fusion research all
>>of these years.
>
> Let us know when the water heater works.
>
> -- Richard
Yes. You're out of the game.
--
http://OnToMars.org For discussions about Mars and Mars colonization
Marvin the Martian
> On 23 Apr 2009 14:58:07 GMT, ric...@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Richard Tobin)
> wrote:
>
>>In article
>><08413c1f-3b73-47ef...@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
>>JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>>
>>>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of cold fusion research all
>>>of these years.
>>
>>Let us know when the water heater works.
>
> You know how plumbers never show up when they said they'd be there.
> Admittedly, 20 years and counting seems excessive, but maybe the one who
> do CF have a really strong union.
You guys are funny. Professional full time clowns maybe? You sure have a
talent for it.
Of course, hot fusion has had no results for the last 50 years. It is
still interesting physics.
But yes, we'll keep it simple for you folks.
Marvin the Martian
The sad thing is, you're deluded enough to think that the mental crap you
spew makes you look bright to the straights and you really let it build
your ego.
Speak to the physics and the experimental results, or be considered the
fool.
Bill Snyder
In other words, you too want to yap without the necessity of
putting any money where your mouth is. Got it.
Marvin the Martian
They have soft x-rays. They have transmutation of elements. They have
helium production. They have heat. The experimental evidence is damn
strong. Water heater? No. Interesting physics? Certainly.
And if you play follow the physics, the results are interesting.
But some people can't speak to the data or the physics, and just want to
"bet". First of all, it's illegal to do over the internet. Secondly, it's
childish.
Bill Snyder
<mar...@ontomars.org> wrote:
>On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:43:09 -0500, Bill Snyder wrote:
>
>> On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 16:10:50 -0500, Marvin the Martian
>> <mar...@ontomars.org> wrote:
>
>
>>>Speak to the physics and the experimental results, or be considered the
>>>fool.
>>
>> In other words, you too want to yap without the necessity of putting any
>> money where your mouth is. Got it.
>
>They have soft x-rays. They have transmutation of elements. They have
>helium production. They have heat. The experimental evidence is damn
>strong. Water heater? No. Interesting physics? Certainly.
>
>And if you play follow the physics, the results are interesting.
>
>But some people can't speak to the data or the physics, and just want to
>"bet". First of all, it's illegal to do over the internet. Secondly, it's
>childish.
Uh-huh. Enjoy your bullshit, then.
Richard Tobin
Marvin the Martian <mar...@ontomars.org> wrote:
>>>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of cold fusion research all
>>>of these years.
>> Let us know when the water heater works.
>Yes. You're out of the game.
I've no idea what that means, but I strongly suspect it's not "they're
on sale at a hardware store near you".
7
> In article
> <08413c1f-3b73-47ef...@r3g2000vbp.googlegroups.com>,
> JohnnyCJohnny <joh...@patmedia.net> wrote:
>
>>It is nice to be vindicated for my support of
>>cold fusion research all of these years.
>
> Let us know when the water heater works.
>
> -- Richard
It already works.
Patterson cell is 100% reproducible each time every time.
Fleichmann and Pons - it was 1:10 success when they announced it.
Now its been improved to above 2:3 success rate.