Newest Cold Fusion Machine Does the Impossible ... Or Does it?
http://www.lifeslittlemysteries.com/newest-....le-1584
"Cold Fusion" Demonstration
Here's the 60 Minutes segment on "cold fusion."
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4955212n
60 Minutes will be doing a segment this Sunday on the rebirth of "cold fusion."
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4950225
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=4950225
After 20 years: New life for cold fusion?
By Katherine Harmon in 60-Second Science Blog
Is the science community warming to cold fusion? It's been 20 years to the day since Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, electrochemists at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, announced the discovery of what they believed to be "cold fusion" (now often referred to as low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR), a room-temperature nuclear reaction that reportedly generated an unexplained amount of heat. The pronouncement spawned a flurry of excitement about a new renewable energy source, but enthusiasm quickly waned after the result wasn't satisfactorily replicated. Today at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in the very same city, researchers are recapping recent developments in the field – including images of what some believe are telltale signs of reaction-born subatomic particles, as well as documentation of heat, helium, gamma rays and other products from possible low-energy nuclear reactions.
"We have been working for … years to know what kinds of questions to address," one of the presenters Antonella De Ninno, a scientist at the New Technolgies Energy and Environment in Italy, said in a statement. "After long term and intensive research, we found ourselves able to give a reasonable … explanation."
One team, led by Pamela Mosier-Boss, an analytical chemist at the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, has announced visual evidence of a fusion-like reaction. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons," Mosier-Boss said in a statement. “People have always asked 'Where's the neutrons,'" she said, and in their presentation, they reported finding evidence of these neurons. By exposing a special kind of plastic to the reaction, patterns of minute dents (or "triple tracks" that show three close nearby forms) were made by excited neutrons created from a nuclear reaction, they report.
In other signs of fusion, Tadahiko Mizuno, an assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at Hokkadio University in Japan, reports having detected gamma radiation and De Ninno notes the production of helium gas in experiments; both are possible byproducts of a nuclear LENR reaction.
The hope of LENR is to replicate the powerful energy generation that occurs in stars such as our sun, but to do so at a much cooler temperature. If successful, it could provide a nearly infinite supply of clean energy here on Earth. But many remain skeptical, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). After reviewing a July report by LENR researchers, the DOE said the evidence "did not conclusively demonstrate the occurrence of cold fusion." DOE recommended research continue, but even its tempered response and skepticism in the scientific community has done little to quell the enthusiasm of researchers.
"The solution of the global warming issue… energy problems, and carbon dioxide can be expected," Mizuno said in a statement, "by putting this nuclear reaction and the energy generation device to practical use." In the meantime, even the already-demonstrated hot fusion waits for its turn in the sun, as work on the collaborative international ITER thermonuclear fusion reactor project crawls along.
http://www.sciam.com/blog....9-03-23
By Katherine Harmon in 60-Second Science Blog
Is the science community warming to cold fusion? It's been 20 years to the day since Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, electrochemists at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, announced the discovery of what they believed to be "cold fusion" (now often referred to as low-energy nuclear reactions, or LENR), a room-temperature nuclear reaction that reportedly generated an unexplained amount of heat. The pronouncement spawned a flurry of excitement about a new renewable energy source, but enthusiasm quickly waned after the result wasn't satisfactorily replicated. Today at the American Chemical Society's national meeting in the very same city, researchers are recapping recent developments in the field – including images of what some believe are telltale signs of reaction-born subatomic particles, as well as documentation of heat, helium, gamma rays and other products from possible low-energy nuclear reactions.
"We have been working for … years to know what kinds of questions to address," one of the presenters Antonella De Ninno, a scientist at the New Technolgies Energy and Environment in Italy, said in a statement. "After long term and intensive research, we found ourselves able to give a reasonable … explanation."
One team, led by Pamela Mosier-Boss, an analytical chemist at the U.S. Navy's Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center, has announced visual evidence of a fusion-like reaction. "If you have fusion going on, then you have to have neutrons," Mosier-Boss said in a statement. “People have always asked 'Where's the neutrons,'" she said, and in their presentation, they reported finding evidence of these neurons. By exposing a special kind of plastic to the reaction, patterns of minute dents (or "triple tracks" that show three close nearby forms) were made by excited neutrons created from a nuclear reaction, they report.
In other signs of fusion, Tadahiko Mizuno, an assistant professor in the department of nuclear engineering at Hokkadio University in Japan, reports having detected gamma radiation and De Ninno notes the production of helium gas in experiments; both are possible byproducts of a nuclear LENR reaction.
The hope of LENR is to replicate the powerful energy generation that occurs in stars such as our sun, but to do so at a much cooler temperature. If successful, it could provide a nearly infinite supply of clean energy here on Earth. But many remain skeptical, including the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). After reviewing a July report by LENR researchers, the DOE said the evidence "did not conclusively demonstrate the occurrence of cold fusion." DOE recommended research continue, but even its tempered response and skepticism in the scientific community has done little to quell the enthusiasm of researchers.
"The solution of the global warming issue… energy problems, and carbon dioxide can be expected," Mizuno said in a statement, "by putting this nuclear reaction and the energy generation device to practical use." In the meantime, even the already-demonstrated hot fusion waits for its turn in the sun, as work on the collaborative international ITER thermonuclear fusion reactor project crawls along.
http://www.sciam.com/blog....9-03-23
By the way, if anyone has tried to read any of this and hasn't understood a word, here's a youtube video to watch. At least you'll think it has a cool soundtrack. :;):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZDeJrFxd3E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZDeJrFxd3E
Japan's Sputnik? The Arata-Zhang Osaka University LENR Demonstration
By Steven B. Krivit
Year after year, New Energy Times readers have asked us, "When will we finally see something demonstrable, a light bulb or a motor running from a LENR experiment?"
Perhaps the wait is over.
On May 22, professor emeritus Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University) and professor Yue Chang Zhang (Shianghai Jiotong University) did it. With the flick of a finger to start the Stirling engine, they saw the heat from their LENR experiment—with no applied electrical energy—turn a small rotor for many minutes. The presumption is that the motor was turning during the nuclear energy production phase rather than the chemical energy production phase.
Arata is a highly respected physicist in Japan who has been the recipient of Japan's highest award, the Order of Cultural Merit, and is the first person to have performed a thermonuclear fusion experiment showing large amounts of deuterium-deuterium reactions in Japan.
However, after more than half a century, thermonuclear fusion research has yet to produce a single experiment that demonstrates any energy release beyond that which it consumes.
Arata and Zhang are not the first to perform a live public demonstration of LENR excess heat, a possible new source of clean nuclear energy, but they are the first to display publicly a LENR application that is visible.
The demonstration took place on Arata's 85th birthday at the Osaka University Advanced Science and Innovation Center. A lecture by Arata at Arata Hall of the Joining and Welding Research Institute (named his honor) on the Suita campus of Osaka University preceded the demonstration, and a question-and-answer session followed the demo.
Norio Yabuuchi, of the High Scientific Research Laboratory of Tsu City, Mie, Japan, provided New Energy Times with a video recording of the public demonstration.
Professor Akito Takahashi of Osaka University witnessed the demonstration. Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers and two television stations. Some of the international print media coverage is listed in a separate item in this issue of New Energy Times under "International News Coverage of 2008 Arata-Zhang Demonstration."
Jed Rothwell, librarian of the LENR-CANR.org Web site, was, according to Takahashi, the only American present at the lecture and demonstration.
"The high operating temperature, instant response and reliability of this device make it the most practical form of LENR yet developed," Rothwell wrote. "The small amount of palladium is also a major advantage. As far as I know, all of the tests with Zr-Pd targets and D2 have produced heat immediately and predictably. It may not be possible to turn off the reaction instantly, but this is no impediment to practical applications; it is not possible to turn off the heat from burning coal or uranium fission, either."
Evidence for the claim of a nuclear reaction came from the quadrupole mass spectrometry measurements of helium produced by the experiment. According to Arata, no helium was present in any of the materials before the experiment, and no helium was introduced from the atmosphere.
Arata states that no input energy is required for the experiment, aside from the energy required to create the initial vacuum and gas pressure and to bake the powder to remove impurities.
In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on LENR research.
"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."
http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/NET29-8dd54geg.htm#sputnik
By Steven B. Krivit
Year after year, New Energy Times readers have asked us, "When will we finally see something demonstrable, a light bulb or a motor running from a LENR experiment?"
Perhaps the wait is over.
On May 22, professor emeritus Yoshiaki Arata (Osaka University) and professor Yue Chang Zhang (Shianghai Jiotong University) did it. With the flick of a finger to start the Stirling engine, they saw the heat from their LENR experiment—with no applied electrical energy—turn a small rotor for many minutes. The presumption is that the motor was turning during the nuclear energy production phase rather than the chemical energy production phase.
Arata is a highly respected physicist in Japan who has been the recipient of Japan's highest award, the Order of Cultural Merit, and is the first person to have performed a thermonuclear fusion experiment showing large amounts of deuterium-deuterium reactions in Japan.
However, after more than half a century, thermonuclear fusion research has yet to produce a single experiment that demonstrates any energy release beyond that which it consumes.
Arata and Zhang are not the first to perform a live public demonstration of LENR excess heat, a possible new source of clean nuclear energy, but they are the first to display publicly a LENR application that is visible.
The demonstration took place on Arata's 85th birthday at the Osaka University Advanced Science and Innovation Center. A lecture by Arata at Arata Hall of the Joining and Welding Research Institute (named his honor) on the Suita campus of Osaka University preceded the demonstration, and a question-and-answer session followed the demo.
Norio Yabuuchi, of the High Scientific Research Laboratory of Tsu City, Mie, Japan, provided New Energy Times with a video recording of the public demonstration.
Professor Akito Takahashi of Osaka University witnessed the demonstration. Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers and two television stations. Some of the international print media coverage is listed in a separate item in this issue of New Energy Times under "International News Coverage of 2008 Arata-Zhang Demonstration."
Jed Rothwell, librarian of the LENR-CANR.org Web site, was, according to Takahashi, the only American present at the lecture and demonstration.
"The high operating temperature, instant response and reliability of this device make it the most practical form of LENR yet developed," Rothwell wrote. "The small amount of palladium is also a major advantage. As far as I know, all of the tests with Zr-Pd targets and D2 have produced heat immediately and predictably. It may not be possible to turn off the reaction instantly, but this is no impediment to practical applications; it is not possible to turn off the heat from burning coal or uranium fission, either."
Evidence for the claim of a nuclear reaction came from the quadrupole mass spectrometry measurements of helium produced by the experiment. According to Arata, no helium was present in any of the materials before the experiment, and no helium was introduced from the atmosphere.
Arata states that no input energy is required for the experiment, aside from the energy required to create the initial vacuum and gas pressure and to bake the powder to remove impurities.
In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on LENR research.
"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."
http://www.newenergytimes.com/news/2008/NET29-8dd54geg.htm#sputnik
Cold fusion success in Japan gets warm reception in India
May 27th, 2008
By K.S. Jayaraman
Bangalore, May 27 (IANS) Researchers in Japan have given a live public demonstration of their cold fusion device, a historic experiment that is likely to revive global interest in this controversial method of energy generation that was earlier debunked as nonsense. A report in the California-based New Energy Times says the tabletop device built by Osaka University physicist Yoshiaki Arata and his associate Yue Chang Zhang continuously generated excess energy in the form of heat and also produced helium particles.
“The demonstration showed their method was highly reproducible,” the report quoted physicist Akito Takahashi, one of the 60 persons from industry and universities who witnessed it, as saying.
The demonstration held on May 22 has drawn immediate praise from Mahadeva Srinivasan, a cold fusion pioneer and formerly associate director of physics at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai.
“The cold fusion community is excited and is reverberating with news of a live public demo,” Srinivasan told IANS from Chennai. “The field is truly ripe for Indian labs to enter and it is hoped that we won’t miss the bus once again.”
The fusion process that powers the sun requires extreme temperature and pressure to force hydrogen nuclei fuse and release energy. Achieving fusion at room temperature was considered impossible until 1989 when American scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons startled the world with their tabletop experiment.
They connected a battery to a pair of palladium electrodes immersed in a jar of water containing deuterium (heavier form of hydrogen) and showed their electrolytic cell produced heat energy in excess of what was consumed. They claimed that deuterium nuclei were being packed into the palladium’s lattice in such a way for fusion to take place.
Later it was shown by several groups including Srinivasan and Padmanabha Krishnagopala Iyengar at BARC in the early 1990s that the reaction produced tritium as well as helium indicating that cold fusion was real. However, further work at BARC was abandoned due to denunciation of cold fusion by mainstream scientists and the US government.
Srinivasan hopes that Arata’s public demonstration in Japan will give new birth to cold fusion research in India.
Arata, who is the recipient of Japan’s highest award, the Emperor’s Prize, is the first person to have performed thermonuclear fusion research in Japan. Arata and his colleague Zhang have been reporting their work on cold fusion at various conferences and in Japanese journals for the last 10 years.
In recent years, they have moved away from electrolysis and switched over to direct loading of deuterium gas into a matrix of zirconium oxide containing palladium nanoparticles. In their latest demonstration, they showed excess heat production commenced almost instantaneously when pure deuterium gas at high pressure was let in.
“The high operating temperature, instant response and reliability of this device make it the most practical form of cold fusion yet developed,” said Jed Rothwell, author of a popular book on cold fusion and another witness to the demonstration.
The Japanese demo comes three months after some of India’s leading nuclear physicists at a meeting in Bangalore formally recommended to the government to revive cold fusion research in India.
“The long neglect of this area (of research) by India must end now,” Malur Ramaswamy Srinivasan, former secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy, told the meeting held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore on Jan 9.
According to Mahadeva Srinivasan, the Central Electrochemical Research Institute in Karaikudi, the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research near Chennai have shown interest in restarting the work.
He said the field of cold fusion (which has been renamed as low energy nuclear reactions or LENR) has matured sufficiently to claim recognition as a valid new branch of science.
“If all that is claimed by the LENR community is validated,” he said, “the prospects of this being developed into a ‘third alternative option’ for generating nuclear energy in the 21st century, besides fission and thermonuclear fusion, are bright.”
http://www.thaindian.com/newspor....82.html
May 27th, 2008
By K.S. Jayaraman
Bangalore, May 27 (IANS) Researchers in Japan have given a live public demonstration of their cold fusion device, a historic experiment that is likely to revive global interest in this controversial method of energy generation that was earlier debunked as nonsense. A report in the California-based New Energy Times says the tabletop device built by Osaka University physicist Yoshiaki Arata and his associate Yue Chang Zhang continuously generated excess energy in the form of heat and also produced helium particles.
“The demonstration showed their method was highly reproducible,” the report quoted physicist Akito Takahashi, one of the 60 persons from industry and universities who witnessed it, as saying.
The demonstration held on May 22 has drawn immediate praise from Mahadeva Srinivasan, a cold fusion pioneer and formerly associate director of physics at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) in Mumbai.
“The cold fusion community is excited and is reverberating with news of a live public demo,” Srinivasan told IANS from Chennai. “The field is truly ripe for Indian labs to enter and it is hoped that we won’t miss the bus once again.”
The fusion process that powers the sun requires extreme temperature and pressure to force hydrogen nuclei fuse and release energy. Achieving fusion at room temperature was considered impossible until 1989 when American scientists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons startled the world with their tabletop experiment.
They connected a battery to a pair of palladium electrodes immersed in a jar of water containing deuterium (heavier form of hydrogen) and showed their electrolytic cell produced heat energy in excess of what was consumed. They claimed that deuterium nuclei were being packed into the palladium’s lattice in such a way for fusion to take place.
Later it was shown by several groups including Srinivasan and Padmanabha Krishnagopala Iyengar at BARC in the early 1990s that the reaction produced tritium as well as helium indicating that cold fusion was real. However, further work at BARC was abandoned due to denunciation of cold fusion by mainstream scientists and the US government.
Srinivasan hopes that Arata’s public demonstration in Japan will give new birth to cold fusion research in India.
Arata, who is the recipient of Japan’s highest award, the Emperor’s Prize, is the first person to have performed thermonuclear fusion research in Japan. Arata and his colleague Zhang have been reporting their work on cold fusion at various conferences and in Japanese journals for the last 10 years.
In recent years, they have moved away from electrolysis and switched over to direct loading of deuterium gas into a matrix of zirconium oxide containing palladium nanoparticles. In their latest demonstration, they showed excess heat production commenced almost instantaneously when pure deuterium gas at high pressure was let in.
“The high operating temperature, instant response and reliability of this device make it the most practical form of cold fusion yet developed,” said Jed Rothwell, author of a popular book on cold fusion and another witness to the demonstration.
The Japanese demo comes three months after some of India’s leading nuclear physicists at a meeting in Bangalore formally recommended to the government to revive cold fusion research in India.
“The long neglect of this area (of research) by India must end now,” Malur Ramaswamy Srinivasan, former secretary to the Department of Atomic Energy, told the meeting held at the National Institute of Advanced Studies in Bangalore on Jan 9.
According to Mahadeva Srinivasan, the Central Electrochemical Research Institute in Karaikudi, the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai, and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research near Chennai have shown interest in restarting the work.
He said the field of cold fusion (which has been renamed as low energy nuclear reactions or LENR) has matured sufficiently to claim recognition as a valid new branch of science.
“If all that is claimed by the LENR community is validated,” he said, “the prospects of this being developed into a ‘third alternative option’ for generating nuclear energy in the 21st century, besides fission and thermonuclear fusion, are bright.”
http://www.thaindian.com/newspor....82.html
Here are a series a photos from Professor Arata's cold fusion demonstration and lecture.
http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo-Photos-AT.htm
http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo-Photos-AT.htm
Arata-Zhang LENR Demonstration
By Steven B. Krivit
New Energy Times
May 22, 2008
OSAKA, JAPAN -- Against a monumental backdrop of bad publicity for cold fusion since 1989, researchers in Japan on May 22 demonstrated the production of excess heat and helium-4, the results of an historic low-energy nuclear reaction experiment.
The mastermind behind the demonstration is Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan who has been the recipent of Japan's highest award, the Emperor's Prize, and is the first person to have performed thermonuclear fusion research in Japan.
A lecture by Arata preceded the demonstration before a live audience in Arata Hall (named in his honor) at the Joint and Welding Research Institute at Osaka University. The demonstration took place in the Osaka University Advanced Science Innovation Center with the help of Arata’s associate, Yue Chang Zhang.
Professor Akito Takahashi of Osaka University was an eyewitness to the demonstration.
"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy (heat) from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi wrote. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers (J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008). This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."
Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers (Asahi, Nikkei, Mainichi, NHK, et al.) and two television stations.
In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on "cold fusion" research, which is now known more properly as low-energy nuclear reaction research.
"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."
New Energy Times will have a more complete report in the next issue on July 10.
http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo.htm
Let's all cross our fingers, etc., and hope that this turns out to be as monumental as it is potentially.
By Steven B. Krivit
New Energy Times
May 22, 2008
OSAKA, JAPAN -- Against a monumental backdrop of bad publicity for cold fusion since 1989, researchers in Japan on May 22 demonstrated the production of excess heat and helium-4, the results of an historic low-energy nuclear reaction experiment.
The mastermind behind the demonstration is Yoshiaki Arata, a highly respected physicist in Japan who has been the recipent of Japan's highest award, the Emperor's Prize, and is the first person to have performed thermonuclear fusion research in Japan.
A lecture by Arata preceded the demonstration before a live audience in Arata Hall (named in his honor) at the Joint and Welding Research Institute at Osaka University. The demonstration took place in the Osaka University Advanced Science Innovation Center with the help of Arata’s associate, Yue Chang Zhang.
Professor Akito Takahashi of Osaka University was an eyewitness to the demonstration.
"Arata and Zhang demonstrated very successfully the generation of continuous excess energy (heat) from ZrO2-nano-Pd sample powders under D2 gas charging and generation of helium-4," Takahashi wrote. "The demonstrated live data looked just like data they reported in their published papers (J. High Temp. Soc. Jpn, Feb. and March issues, 2008). This demonstration showed that the method is highly reproducible."
Takahashi wrote that 60 people from universities and companies in Japan and a few people from other countries attended, as well as representatives from six major newspapers (Asahi, Nikkei, Mainichi, NHK, et al.) and two television stations.
In an earlier conversation with New Energy Times, Arata offered his perspective on "cold fusion" research, which is now known more properly as low-energy nuclear reaction research.
"Some people say we have reached the end of science, that there are no more great discoveries that remain. In my view, nature always has more secrets to reveal," Arata wrote. "I always stay on guard not to be too possessed by my own current knowledge. History has shown us repeatedly, for example, the foolishness of denying 'heliocentricism,' which resulted from individuals adhering too strongly to their own knowledge or to what was common sense in the past."
New Energy Times will have a more complete report in the next issue on July 10.
http://newenergytimes.com/news/2008/29img/Arata-Demo.htm
Let's all cross our fingers, etc., and hope that this turns out to be as monumental as it is potentially.