As I predicted on Thursday night, promoter Andrea Rossi’s final demonstration of a series of boxes of pipes and wires did not light any bulb or turn any motor. Again, he failed at science, and he failed to deliver a technological device.
Rossi reported on his Web site that Italian engineers with an unknown affiliation gathered data on behalf of an unidentified customer. Rossi uploaded a technical report written by an unknown author and a data file to his Web site. He also reported that, as a result of the data, the unidentified customer accepted delivery of Rossi’s device.
New Energy Times reader Terry Blanton looked closely at the signatures on the technical report and observed that there was something fishy about them. It looks like Rossi tried to make it look like he crossed out the name of the customer, but it’s still possible to see through his redaction. In the place you would expect to see the name of the customer, it says the word “customer.”
In response to my article yesterday, “Energy Catalzyer: Extraordinary Scams Require Extraordinary Claims,” New Energy Times reader John W. Ratcliff asked some good questions.
Ratcliff asked, “Are we to believe [Rossi thinks] he can embezzle millions of dollars of investor capital, somehow manage to transfer these funds to a hidden account of his own, and get away with it?”
These are good questions. I answered most of them at the end of my article Rossi’s 11th Test, 11th Failure when I wrote, “I believe he doesn’t have what he claims. I believe he knows it. I believe he’s hoping that, if he can just get enough money, he can eventually make it work.”
Rossi is not stupid; far from it. He is an extremely intelligent, strategic, articulate, charming and creative man.
On Jan. 20, 2011, when I had an open mind and assumed the best of Rossi, he wrote to me, “You help me now; I will help you forever.” He offered to fly me over to Italy, and I told him that was wrong, I could not accept his offer. He then offered to drive four hours round-trip to pick me up at Milan airport, and I told him no, I’ll take the train down to Bologna. Eventually, I agreed to let him buy me a sandwich and pay for a taxi ride back to my hotel.
Visually, Rossi exhibits absolute confidence. Yet listen carefully when I interview him on camera and ask him a crucial question: He is vague, he stutters and he is logically inconsistent, even within a 12-minute period.
I asked him whether he had a specific moment of discovery in his low-energy nuclear reaction research.
“Yes, because I burned a finger,” Rossi said.
“Can you tell me more about that moment?” I asked.
Rossi replied, “Yes, uhh, because, umm, I was, uh, uh, working with a, with a small reactor which was made of, uh, umm, of copper, was made of copper, uh, and with a small lead shielding, and I was giving energy with a resistance, uh, giving, eh, some sort of temperature. At a certain point, the, the temperature raised very suddenly, and, uh, and I had in my, the, the, uh, left finger of, uh, of, uh, the, the, the, the finger of, umm, uh, the index of my left hand, umm, sit on a, a part of this small reactor which was as big as this, and I burned the top of the finger.”
Ratcliff asked, “What end game is there for Rossi in the ‘hoax’ hypothesis other than jail or court, penniless and disgraced?”
Note that prison, bankruptcy and disgrace have never been deterrents for Rossi. See his prior fraud convictions and imprisonment.
Now look back at the timeline. Rossi built his story slowly and strategically, first getting the buy-in from retired University of Bologna professor Sergio Focardi, who had reached his senior years and had, until Rossi came along, never realized his dreams of “cold fusion.”
Then Rossi gained the confidence of an active University of Bologna professor, Giuseppe Levi, who believed the Rossi claim on first sight.
“I was feeling like somebody that has arrived on a new island,” Levi said. “Imagine you are traveling on a boat and you see an island that was not on the map. And you just traveled, and you are walking on a new island, and the island is almost completely not known, and you want to tell it to everybody.”
Then Rossi found an ally in technology journalist Mats Lewan, who paid little attention to things like control experiments or published papers. Lewan proved to Rossi that he would promote him uncritically, publishing without checking facts, like Rossi’s claim of a major research payment to the University of Bologna.
The Sept. 7 and Oct. 6 tests were not just other mundane tests of Rossi’s device. They were Rossi’s test to see whether Lewan would turn a blind eye to the pre-heating phase and uncritically watch more steam demonstrations even though Rossi (and Lewan) clearly knew that a sub-boiling test was the best way to remove doubt about Rossi’s claim. Lewan passed Rossi’s test, and that gave Rossi the confidence to use his new configuration yesterday.
After 10 months of giving Rossi the benefit of the doubt and more, Lewan today confined himself to reporting data given to him by a new third party, engineer Domenico Fioravanti, who has an unclear association with an unspecified, and quite possibly fictitious, customer of Rossi’s. Of all the pre-show hype about all the foreign academic dignitaries who would stand as witnesses to the Rossi miracle, Lewan’s story quotes not one.
“Neither Ny Teknik nor any other of the guests had any possibility to check the measurements made,” Lewan wrote. “The invitees could only observe the plant in operation for a few brief moments.”
Rossi’s case is certainly extraordinary, and his claim is so bold that many people cannot imagine that he would pull off a scam this big for so long. Or that he would pull the wool over so many people’s eyes. But he has. A blog commenter using the name “Penny Gruber” nailed it:
“Rossi is a convicted [criminal guilty of] serial fraud. His discovery is that, with enough chutzpah, one can convince a number of people that an electric tea kettle is a new kind of nuclear reactor.”
Fortunately, nobody appears to have given Rossi much money. But Rossi has abused the honest and sincere fans who have given him their moral support and encouragement. There is nothing wrong with wanting a new source of clean nuclear energy or wanting liberation from the petrocacy. I hope Rossi’s fans will remember their own dreams and desires for a better world and continue their enthusiasm for legitimate low-energy nuclear reaction research and technology.
Steven, I do understand your interpretation of your observations. I believe that interpretation is influenced by the fact that Rossi is a brilliant industrial entrepreneur and not in any way a serious scientist. He rubs many people the wrong way because he is ferociously focused and has little patience for fools.
I, too want very much for the real science to go forward. I ache for this every day. I want to get involved personally because I am so intensely focused on this since January. Yes, I know what you told me…….and I know you have been at this far longer than “since January”, I respect that and I respect you.
Anyway, I have applied to Rossi for an internship. I doubt he will take me up on this but if he does I will go and I will help. I know the environment in which he works. I understand it. I know the rules. He is not the evil villain that you think he is. I read all that stuff too, I just interpret it differently because my perspective is very different from yours.
You will say he is an evil Pied Piper and that instead of advancing the cause he is diverting precious resources away from more legitimate uses. I disagree, his story has lit the fire in many hearts and minds. This will turn out to be a good thing. That is as obvious to me as the fact that he has something useful and powerful up and running. Now, we get to work tuning the operational intricacies in order to guarantee its performance will meet the needs of the first and appropriately first customers who must be the industries for reasons which should be obvious.
Sincerely,
Stephen Taylor
Posted at http://pesn.com/2011/10/30/9501941_Rebuttal_to_Krivits_Accusation_that_Andrea_Rossi_is_a_Fraudster/
Scam?
I think that is 99% improbable. Part of that is because I am privy to some confidential information about an independent validation by a very credible institution that starts with an N.
I would not entirely rule out Steve’s accusations of a scam; but I personally find that extremely unlikely. I give it a 1% probability just because I have fooled before by people I thought were genuine but who turned out to be scammers.
I have approached Rossi many times since January with emails I’ve received from people wanting to invest in his company, or buy units. Every time, he turns them away, saying “wait until after the 1 MW plant test.” If he was running a scam, you would think he would have taken this money.
Krivit’s account of Rossi’s telling him about his “ah ha moment” bothers me, but one possible explanation is that Rossi didn’t understand the question. He has a hard time understanding spoken English, and he doesn’t understand written English perfectly either.
I don’t have a problem with Rossi’s experience with the Petrol Dragon. [According to Rossi,] he was set up by the Italian Mafia because he wouldn’t let them get involved in his company. [Rossi says] that they were behind all of that harrassment he recieved, and from which he was exonerated, [again, according to Rossi.] I would imagine there is something similar behind the gold trafficking situation as well.
I’m further bolstered by the sentiment I received from Rossi since meeting him in person here in Bologna. He was already friendly toward me by email and phone. A person at the event said that “he is very intuitive when he meets someone.” I feld like Rossi liked me a lot more after meeting me, and was even fawning toward me as valued supporter of what he is trying to do for the benefit of humanity. That’s what motiviates me as well. Some of that favoritisim can be seen in the 1-hour report and Q&A he did at the end of the day on Oct. 28.
(Parts I and II of IV are now up at http://youtu.be/nc5K090SZFg and http://youtu.be/1UmoBoAcvxg )
No, Rossi is not an academic. He doesn’t set up his tests in an academic way. That takes many months or even years. He’s in a hurry. I like that about him. I don’t have a problem with it in the least. It took four years of airplanes flying around before academics finally admitted they were wrong about man not being able to build flying craft.
Our civilization is on the brink fo total meltdown. We need this technology to go to market now. Rossi is doing that. He should be applauded, not harassed.
Now that this first [unidentified] customer has signed off on this technology, and Rossi will be receiving funds, he can pay the half million needed for the University of Bologna and Upsala University to begin doing their tests, which will take 2 years. Meanwhile, hopefully millions of customers will be served with product; and mainstream academia will have been shown to be behind the times once again.
In the future, when people are giving powerpoint presentations about the failures of mainstream academia, it may be that their excoriation of cold fusion for two decades will be seen as an even larger failure and oversight than their 4 year lag time on human flight.
“I would not entirely rule out Steve’s accusations of a scam”
The best evidence for a scam is that Rossi has been told by competent scientists and engineers over and over for the last nine months exactly how to prove that the E-cat works as he says. He has never done so.
He has never carried out a blank run (without hydrogen) to show that the measurement system works. He has never allowed proper disassembly to rule out hidden energy sources or storage of energy.
He has never run long enough to rule out stored energy. Why? Would you not have stayed around if he had decided to run a couple of days? A week? Without that diesel generator?
Why is a megawatt plant necessary when it is much easier to test a 10 kilowatt device and it is just as conclusive?
Why would a famous and large company want to remain secret when they hold a device that can revolutionize the world?
Rossi behaves exactly like a free energy scammer– exactly like Steorn. He can disprove a scam in less than two weeks by getting independent testing of a single E-cat module. He doesn’t. WHY NOT?
The last test aimed to demonstrate the possibility to produce large amount of heat with
E_CAT doesn’t add nothing to the scientific knowledge.
I wonder why the customer had so fast approved the acquisition of the power plant. I think that
was needed a lot of more tests and time before reaching the safety that it was suitable
to the scope. Clearly by my point of view it has been only e theatrical event. Hoping that
soon will be made a test by UNIBO or by Uppsala University to clarify all the doubts.
Effectively, if you fail to demonstrate the reality of your claims with one device, I don’t see the point in running 30 of them, in the same way as before, as a way to demonstrate something more or better.
There was a very simple way to show that the device was working: use it without hydrogen to fuel the supposed nuclear reaction, and then repeat exactly the same experiment, adding hydrogen. Comparing the results would prove definitely if extra heat, from nuclear fusion, is produced. Strangely nobody suggested it at Rossi.
I’ve known Rossi, and I think that he is not a cheater, but, likely, he is self deluded: he invested all his fortune in this stuff, betting his life on it, as a way to revenge the previous failures and problems with justice. Now, he simply can’t arrive to admit that the device is not working.
I known Focardi, too. My impression is that he is there to show that science back the experiment, but he has not really a clue on what is happening inside the device and around it.
So I wonder how much longer this strange show will continue…
I still don’t understand how the fraud works if the customer is fictitious unless he is funded by big oil. How anyone present can believe a customer would accept a 5.5 hour test as proof that this can work as a source of industrial heating is beyond me. I was really hoping my suspicions were wrong but until I see GE shipping these I’m afraid he has managed another super capacitor style show. Let’s hope those others that claim excess heat from nickel can get an independently tested prototype to the press before any damage is done by this episode.
Dan,
Quite a good question. The main scam has nothing to do with a likely fictitious customer or the Oct. 28 demo. The Oct. 28 demo was not for the benefit of any customer. It was done because Rossi put all his bets on delivering a viable commercial reactor by Oct. 15 (or 28). It was a last-ditch effort to save face.
He had built up a cult following by leading them on that come October, he would, once and for all, prove he had what he claimed. Had Rossi not even attempted his show on Oct. 28, it would have been immediately over for Rossi and his following. But he did put on another entertaining show and therefore will be able to ride out the goodwill of his fans for a while longer.
The scam is that when real potential investors attempted to do real due diligence, Rossi’s deal with them was this: “You can test my device, but if I can prove to you that it works, then you have to pay me money.” We’re not even talking sale or licensing, just a fee for the privilege of testing. According to several sources, the fees Rossi has demanded have varied from half a million to 150 million.
In a lot of the cases, he binds the people by NDAs that prohibit them, in the event the deal or due diligence falls through, that they cannot utter a word about it. Thus, the public and – key point – the next potential customer does not get the benefit of what the prior due diligence team learns.
Some of this was explained to me by one person at NASA who met with Rossi at Marshall on July 14, 2011, by a second person who knew about the (real) potential customer Rossi met with on Aug. 2-4, 2011 (Preston), and by a third person, retired from NASA who went to Bologna on Sept. 5 and 6 who was outraged enough to tell some details to some of his close associates, and to tell me some details, but didn’t feel a moral obligation to allow me to report his firsthand witness account on the record.
If Rossi were really to perform a serious test for a serious customer, there is every reason in the world he would want to keep it hushed, just like he did on Sept. 5 and 6. The Oct. 28 “demo” was not done for any customer; it was done for Rossi’s followers, who in turn, have helped him gain attention and recognition through massive amounts of Internet traffic.
SBK
Unfortunately, there are almost always plenty of people who will invest in energy scams of various sorts without doing proper due diligence. There is example after example. One is Carl Tilley and his electric DeLorean car that supposedly needed no recharging. Another is Dennis Lee with his electric generator that supposedly required nothing but magnets to run. I mention Tilley and Lee because both are now convicted felons due to their scams.
Steorn is another case of a probable (but not proven) magnetic motor fraud. They are still in business and even received new investment money within the last six months. Yet, they have been making baseless promises for years and have held multiple demos that actually refuted their claims!
Hope is boundless and many investors are gullible. If Rossi is scamming, as seems more and more likely, he is depending on this gullibility. And he is fairly accurately following Steorn’s model.
Thanks for the clear and logical posts on this.
Watched developments since January, getting really sick of PESWiki and others which amounts to nothing more than unquestioned “Rossi says” cheerleading.
In my opinion the individual unit tests had more credibility than this 1MW (err 470kW) unit that just happened to have a ~400kW genset outside.
Steve, I agree with you in general, but we don’t know Rossi’s motivations and we can only guess. For me the most direct evidence for his dishonesty came during your interview with Focardi where Rossi acted as interpreter. He misused that role by trying to make it appear that Focardi had pushed for the public demo. When that didn’t work, he tried to conflate the demo with the manuscript both had submitted for publication the year before, which had indeed been Focardi’s initiative. The bottom line is that it was Rossi who had promoted the public demo and not Focardi. Rossi abused his role as interpreter trying to hide that fact.
What you say about Focardi’s involvement is very interesting since you met all the players. It confirms my impression. One aspect you didn’t mention is that Focardi was never told about the inner workings of the e-cat or about the secret catalyzer. That is very strange since he was hired by Rossi as the expert in the field. It is one more example of seeking scientific validation without allowing real scientific involvement.
The ratio of copper isotopes Kulander found in the sample provided by Rossi makes it highly likely that regular copper was purposely added to the nickel powder. I know that scientific arguments are routinely dismissed by the “true believers” as biased and as the result of a vast conspiracy. That of course doesn’t make them so. There is considerable ongoing effort on serious LENR research and there are plenty of meetings and conferences on the subject.
The other scientific arguments that have been made regarding the height of the coulomb barrier and the absence of gamma rays are equally compelling. Even if one or the other of all these arguments could be explained away, it is highly unlikely that they are all wrong.
One more argument that as far as I know hasn’t been made before has to do with nickel isotope ratios in the sun (see for example “Isotopes of nickel in the sun” by Brault, J. W.; Holweger, H. Astrophysical Journal, Part 2 – Letters to the Editor, vol. 249, Oct. 1, 1981, p. L43-L46.) It turns out that the isotope ratio in the sun is the same as on earth. The Ni + H reaction Rossi claims happens in his e-cat would certainly also happen in the sun where temperatures pressures and densities are much higher. Over billions of years all the nickel isotopes that allegedly react with hydrogen in Rossi’s reactors would have been converted to copper since there is plenty of hydrogen in the sun. Yet that is not what is observed.
Regarding the October 28 test, let me just ad that the large motor-generator used for the warm-up phase was not turned off during the self sustaining phase. Also, it seems strange that the secret buyer accepts delivery with less than 50% of rated power demonstrated while only insisting on the repair of a few small leaks.
Unfortunately, what we all hoped to be the greatest discovery of the century will probably turn out to be the greatest scam.
I’m not the first to wonder if Rossi’s “customer” is for real, but more specifically, does it seem odd to anyone else that such a customer would send a representative to such a demonstration with authorization to buy the product right on the spot, after only a few hours’ observation?
Could this Fioravante be an eccentric billionaire with a hobby of collecting large-scale perpetual motion machines?
“Fortunately, nobody appears to have given Rossi much money.”
We don’t really have any way to know that. It’s all “Rossi says”. An Ampenergo official said in an interview, when the company’s relationship to Rossi was announced, that they had paid him a considerable sum.
The Steorn scam comes to mind. Steorn is an Irish company that took 20 million Euros around 2006 from dozens of investors. They claimed to have a robust magnetic motor that required no input power to run. They gave two “major” demos, both of which failed to prove that they had anything. For quite a while, they claimed they had no source of outside money and then someone found the records from the Irish government which proved that they did.
Who knows who gave what to Rossi and when? For sure, a lot of credulous people were (and still are) willing — or so they claim in many blogs.
To me, the best indication that Rossi is probably running a scam is that he doesn’t allow any independent testing, even when it is so quick and easy to come by from people he knows well and trusts such as the entire physics department at the University of Bologna or Upsala. Either of those institutions could give him a rigorous and accurate answer in at most two weeks regarding whether or not the E-cat works using a nuclear process. Yet he won’t let them.
Another indication is that he has been told over and over again how to test E-cats properly and he has had ample opportunity to do so himself and he has not done it. He was also told that going to a larger machine that combines dozens of E-cats would further obscure the tests yet he did that useless experiment anyway.
I don’t know what end game Rossi envisions. Steorn doesn’t seem to have any (they’re still barely pooping along) and Bernie Madoff didn’t have one either.
Steve,
you should cut some slack to Mats Lewan.
I have a hunch that he is pretty much aware that something might be wrong with the e-cat story.
But the conditions are difficult for him.
His boss – and the readers of Ny teknik as well -definitely ask for further reports on this story.
The e-cat buzz created some real attention to Ny teknik – worldwide!
I guess it is clear as day: If he would have asked all those nasty questions he would have been kicked out by Rossi. Whereas you acted as an uncompromising investigator, he had little choice but to leave it with the friendly reporter.
The position he is in is pretty similar to all the reporters working in these “difficult” countries or with criminals. If you do a job in Afghanistan as a reporter and want some interviews with the Taliban you simply can’t ask the “though questions” and report about the nasty things they do.
If you need an interview with a criminal you simply can’t confront him with his evil-doing.
No, you have to do it a bit more subtle, these guys have to unmask themselves.
And Mats was not too bad with that.
The general tone of Mats reports are friendly, yep, perhaps sometimes a bit too friendly, but he always ads phrases like: “According to”.., or “Assuming that the report is correct”, what indicates a lot, don’t you think so? I guess this is everything he can do – as long as he desires to stay a first hand source in direct contact with Mr. Rossi.
The price he pays as such a “friendly” reporter from the lions’ den is, that he get’s blamed for supping up with the devil or fraternizing with the evil.
But NyTeknik can’t be compared to “Nature Physics” or “New Energy Times”.
If Mats would have been a reporter from Nature, than I would have been upset too.
But NyTeknik is a weekly magazine, definitely in need of some entertaining news that are related to technical developments.
And what is more entertaining these days than this E-cat soap?
Last but not least, eventually even all those “friendly” reports exposed a lot.
A good portion of analysis here on New Energy Times was extracted from or based upon the reports from Mats Lewan, debunking couple of things, right?
Thus I suggest not being too harsh with him, he is sort of doing his job.
Who needs to be blamed big time are the so called scientists, who not only turned a blind eye, but a “blind brain” into this.
Whereas for Mats there is the excuse that he is just reporting, I find little to no excuse for those scientists. Their job was supposed to be scientific examination and evaluation.
They failed with both, thus being an epic disgrace for the universities and science departments they stand for.
Best
Andrew
very interesting, I read an article of Mats Lewan, and that’s right, he is very cautious about the reality of all this.
in general, thanks to mister Krivit for the information. I think he is the closest from the truth…unfortunately.
greetings from france
“But NyTeknik is a weekly magazine, definitely in need of some entertaining news that are related to technical developments.”
Think of all the people who made asses of themselves parroting Ny Teknik’s reporting. “Entertainment” of a sort, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be better to have a public that didn’t have to be pandered to that way, that couldn’t be pandered to that way? That won’t happen as long as “according to” is a Get Out of Jail Free card.
Your post has found itself worthy of a rebuttal by the great conspiracy theorist of the free energy field, Mr. Sterling Allan, over at PSEN.
I’ve been following the antics of Allan for years now. He’s never met a free energy device he wouldn’t give the greatest benefit of doubt until, finally, proven an inevitable hoax as they all have. I repeat that *all*, as in 100% of the time always.
He supports the belief that Stanley Meyer, of water powered dune buggy fame, was murdered to suppress his technology. In fact, he supports a lot of HOH claimants even though none of them have ever worked.
He asked me in another forum to ‘prove’ that Rossi was conducting a hoax. To me, the hoax hypothesis should be considered the default position in lieu of the fact that his work has not been published or replicated. Add to that the simple observation that not a single demonstration he has performed has been shown to produce so much as a single milliwatt of electrical energy.
How can you beat that? A guy touting a free energy device that can’t produce electricity! Instead we argue about ‘steam quality’ and other nonsense. Last I checked, we have had the technological capability to convert steam to electricity for about a hundred years.
Apparently, Rossi hasn’t figured out how to turn steam into electricity yet, so maybe someone could give him a hand?
If his device needs a little bit of electricity to keep it’s parts running, that’s just fine. Start the thing up, send the output steam to an electrical generator, feed that electricity back into the machine and un-plug it from the wall!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There you have it. A self-sustained closed system which would be monumentally more convincing than anything we have seen to date. And, unless I am somehow woefully confused, this should be a trivial thing to do. And, instead of measuring steam we would be measuring amperes, something just a tad bit more concrete and less susceptible to misinterpretation.
And, if it’s so trivial, why has he not done it yet? Perhaps because his device doesn’t work, isn’t over-unity, and his house of cards would collapse?
I hardly think I should be the only one asking this question. If you have a device that can produce cheap energy, wouldn’t it be cool if it actually produced…well..some energy as output?
Not a tea kettle boiling, but usable electrical energy?
Am I really asking for too much?
Or, am I under mind control by the black-op secret force CIA MK-ULTRA goons who have implanted alien splinters into my brain?
Yeah, that’s far more likely the story that I’m simply a engineer who has a fondness for rational thought.
John W. Ratcliff
This criticism of Rossi is far to leient. He is making his beggest claim yet with no back up data whatsoever! Hitler got away with the big lie by deftly mixing in some small amount of truth. Rossi doesn’t seem to need to mix in even small amounts of truth any longer.
I want a nickname like the Snake too.
I dub thee Satan’s Spawn for your heretical disbelief of one whose motives are so clearly pure, selfless and truthful. When Rossi speaks whosoever doubts him is prima facie evil incarnate. You, oh evil doer, will soon realize that when Mr. Rossi says his machine works, then it works. When a non-scientist reports on a new process without any credible testing, and refuses to revise test procedures when told how to do so in simple ways, then that non-scientist must be taken at his word that his are only altruistic intentions to hurry the new tech to market and by so doing, save all humanity. I for one, applaud Mr. Rossi’s efforts and again, dub thee Satan’s Spawn. By the way, how is your research progressing?
FYI, http://jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/050502/met_9322821.html is an great example of how a con man operates, and just how easy it is to con people who should know better. This man was able to get several million dollars from companies like Blockbuster and Intel.
Awesome article. I find it amazing that of the hundreds of E-Cat and cold fusion websites that are popping up each day, not a single one makes mention of his previous transgressions. I was initially paying attention in excitement over the potential energy transformation…Now I’m watching for the train wreck.
Steve – I am one of the skeptics who finds the evidence for the existence of LENR phenomena convincing. Rossi, however, has provided no definitive proof of his technology in any of his demonstrations. It is likely that his work will be without useful result, probably because it is erroneous, either by inadvertence or design.
There’s little point in delving into the details of the shortfall in Rossi’s Oct. 28 ‘demonstration’, as you and others have done that well. At every point at which an honest, rational businessman and entrepreneur would have chosen “A”, Rossi chose “B” – independent observers, identified observers, external power sources monitored by independent observers…none of it. Instead, at every point, a rationalization…the customer wishes to remain unidentified…no reporters can talk with the customers…we have to have the 500KW generator running during the test because…
Those who are befuddled by Rossi’s apparent irrational conduct need only recall that people are capable of remarkably delusory thinking, effective on themselves and others. Consider Steorn, with over 20 million Euros invested and not a product for sale yet. Consider Black Light Power, with over US$60 million invested and not a product for sale yet. Finally, consider Bernie Madoff, who fleeced so many of the rich and powerful for decades, purely on the strength of his persona. People do irrational things, sometimes because they are self-deluded, sometimes because they wish to delude others for gain.
The October 28th test is unfortunate because Rossi’s farce or fraud will further delay serious exploration of LENR physics, and thereby potentially delay realization of a new energy source that humanity badly needs.
The available evidence suggests Rossi is at best a clown, at worst, a snake.
Dear Dr. Krivit….
stupid little question……..why insulate all the e-cats separately? If you are going to stick them in a modified freight container, why not insulate the container? Much quicker and easier and can be insulated to a higher r factor than wrapping crap around the individual units.
Second stupid question……why insulate at all? With all this amount of excess power as heat, why bother to save yourself a few points in heat loss? If you are just going to run the working fluid straight through to a heat exchanger and then loop it back through, how many points can insulation gain you?
In the USA you have to have a permit, annual inspections and a trained boiler operator to use process steam/live steam. Steam in industrial application can be very dangerous.
THIS GUYS EQUIPMENT IS SO SUBSTANDARD!! Superheated steam CUTS FLESH LIKE A KNIFE! Where is the concern? Check out the Mythbusters video where they built a two story house with a water heater in the basement, and plugged up the popoff valve and defeated the thermostat. Then they systematically overheated it. This is a simple home waterheater, now. It went all the way through the roof and another hundred feet or so.
I think I would be correct in saying that if you make a mistake on the amount of water through and the BTU’s applied you will eventually get steam. Compare a home pressure cooker to the pictures of rossi;s ecats. Even a home pressure cooker is built better/safer.
Oh well. I hope its just wallets that get hurt with this guy.
It defies my logic why people or so convinced and eager to call this either a scam or break through. For both extreme stand points there isn’t yet DEFENITE prove. Time will tell if the thing works and why and how or why not.
It’s clearly to early to call this a scam or break through. And it is a potential too import technology to simply dismiss based on feelings, sentiments, past experiences, opinions and/or lack of scientific prove (for or against).
I personly find it hard to believe that all that Rossi is trying to achieve is setting up the worlds greatest scam, knowing that the net rusult will be eternal shame and probably a view behind bars.