Is Rossi's Cold Fusion the Real Deal?

[cmooo]

I've been intrigued to see the Rossi claims being dismissed outright here, without any apparent examination of the evidence. There is pathological science, but there is the opposite - pathological refusal to accept any evidence.

Personally, as a scientist and engineer, I prefer to keep an open mind on the mysterious, rather than a blanket refusal to accept things just because I do not understand them.

While there have been dozens of fraudulent claims for 'free energy machines', most of which follow a similar path (e.g Steorn) of never giving public demonstrations, providing little or no evidence, continual delays, and taking customers money. These are usually quickly and easily dismissed as frauds (and rightly so).

The Rossi Cold Fusion claims are not like this, and are unlike any scam I've ever come across.

Instead of dismissing it out of hand, here are some of the salient points;
- They have now made five demonstrations to independent third parties. They originally planned to give one only, but were persuaded by skeptics who said their first demo wasn't proof enough, to give further demonstrations.
- All the parties attending the demonstrations (dozens of people now) have been unable to find any obvious, or even non-obvious ways in which the tests can have been faked.
- Skeptics have been allowed to devise their own tests for the 'black box' generator. (But they are not allowed to examine the innards of the box.) They have devised various ways to measure input power and output power and been allowed to use their own test equipment. The initial tests were less than one hour, and they (the skeptics) wanted a longer demo - and were later given an 18-hour test that ruled out conventional energy sources (batteries, chemical reactions etc)
- The amounts of energy being released are not small. Not milliwatts, or watts, that could be lost in the noise or experimental error. Kilowatts of power are being generated from un-feasibly small 'black box' reactors. The earlier tests were measured as producing around 10 Kilowatts of power for 18 hours. The signal to noise for this effect is very high.
- They are not asking for money from anyone. They have no investors (unlike Steorn who raised a claimed €14M from some poor suckers) and have used only their own money. They have repeatedly said they will ask for no (or accept any) money until they deliver working machines, and only expect to be paid when customers are fully satisfied by their claims.

Finally they are not in this for an academic exercise. They claim to have an invention that could be revolutionary, and anyone in their shoes, were this true, would be equally cagey about sharing the secrets, and I would suspect equally keen to benefit financially from their discovery.

And before you make any of the obvious claims such as 'they were powering it via a secret cable, please do not think the scientists, and skeptics who have witnessed these demonstrations were either stupid, incompetent or fools. That is both arrogant and disingenuous. ALL obvious methods of faking the results have been ruled out.

How do I know this? Because I have been following this development since the first demonstration in January, and have read every word written by those attending the demonstrations, those making the claims, including reading all the papers written by the professor of the university who is one of the pair making these claims, going back 15 years.

So I'm wondering if this will provoke an intelligent discussion, or whether it will descend into name calling and mud-slinging and the usual tediously blinkered 'it's impossible so I'm not going to even consider it' approach.

C

 

[JaredJames]

No, not this again.

The arguments above are all covered in the previous threads.

If you read all the way through, you will see it has been decided that this subject is closed until later this year when the thing is built and working. At which point we will have our answer either way.

 

[Borek]

So I'm wondering if this will provoke an intelligent discussion, or whether it will descend into name calling and mud-slinging and the usual tediously blinkered 'it's impossible so I'm not going to even consider it' approach.

Unfortunately, as experience showed, no discussion of the subject stays civilized. As Jared stated, everything that should be said, have been already said. Now we wait to see what will happen.