Friday 26 October 2012

A New Type Of Nuclear Reaction Or Just A Scam?

On January 14, 2011, 61-year-old Italian inventor Andrea Rossi staged a spectacular demonstration. In a warehouse in Bologna, he switched on a strange contraption that looked like a leg of lamb wrapped in aluminum foil. He called it the 'E-Cat,' short for 'energy catalyzer.' A mysterious reaction occurred, generating large amounts of excess heat - far more than any known chemical reaction could produce. The heat boiled water into steam. The steam could be used to spin a turbine to make electricity.

He has convinced a small army of researchers that his box can harness a new type of nuclear reaction. Typically during demonstrations the device is covered up. The device has not been independently verified. Of the January demonstration, Discovery Channel analyst Benjamin Radford wrote that 'If this all sounds fishy to you, it should. In many ways cold fusion is similar to perpetual motion machines.'

2 comment(s):

John De Herrera said...

"In many ways cold fusion is similar to s perpetual motion machines."
In NO way is cold fusion like a perpetual motion machine. It does NOT continue to produce heat energy after the 'fuel' is exhausted. There is a 'fuel' made up of Ni powder, Hydrogen gas and a 'catalyst' that supports the reaction. Quite possibly, the hydrogen enters the metal lattice and loses the electrons, where protons become neutrons. Then there is little repulsion keeping the neutrons out of the nucleus (Neutron Capture). For now, the process is still called 'cold fusion'. If a new theory is developed, the name can be changed. jdh

Gerard said...

I should have made this clearer.

What was meant here was that cold fusion is treated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the same way that perpetual motion is treated. The deputy commissioner of patents, Kepplinger, said in 2004 that it was done using the same argument as with perpetual motion machines: that they do not work.