NASA LENR Cold Fusion

[humanfusionproject]

Hello all, I am new to the FFS forums. Currently working my way through all the posts trying to get myself up to date on everything!

A bit about me: I think that achieving net power from nuclear fusion is the most important thing that could be done at this point in time, bar none. LPP and DPF are my favourite contenders for achieving this! I am not a scientist although I wish I was. I want to see the world in a much better state than it is currently in.

Having said all of this it would seem that my first post on these forums is going to end up being slightly heretical. A friend has just sent me a youtube video from NASA which he has tracked back to their website.

In the video they claim to have ‘demonstrated ability to produce excess amounts of energy, cleanly, without hazardous ionizing radiation…’ etc.

Video: http://technologygateway.nasa.gov/media/CC/lenr/lenr.html (see 00:48)

Related info: http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Zawodny-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf

Can anybody comment on the significance of this information or point me to anywhere it has already been discussed. Many thanks 🙂

Edit: related info link was a copy of the video link

[Ivy Matt]

A little background:

http://joe.zawodny.com/index.php/2012/01/14/technology-gateway-video/

There have been arguments as to whether he is backpedalling in his blog post, or merely explaining himself in a manner that a brief video doesn’t allow. I think I will just let him speak for himself.

You can find a copy of Zawodny’s patent application here:

http://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/ZawodnyJmethodforp.pdf

And here is his presentation from a recent NASA workshop on cold fusion:

http://newenergytimes.com/v2/government/NASA/20110922NASA-Zawodny-GRC-LENR-Workshop.pdf

Zawodny favors the Widom-Larsen hypothesis, according to which the phenomena associated with “cold fusion” are not really fusion, but a different type of nuclear process known as neutron capture. Those who favor the Widom-Larsen hypothesis also favor the term “LENR” (Low Energy Nuclear Reactions) over “cold fusion”; however, not all who use the term “LENR” are Widom-Larsen devotees.

[delt0r]

And where do these neutrons come from? Sorry but after 20 years the data does not back up anything other than nothing nuclear. In one statement they claim transmutation of metals, in the next they claim D+D->4He via lattice effects to explain away the lack of neutrons, tritium or gammas. A lattice effect billions of times higher than anything proposed or measured.

[Ivy Matt]

Well, that’s one area where some people feel the Widom-Larsen hypothesis falls down: the neutrons are supposed to be formed from a proton and an electron. I’m not sure how that’s supposed to happen, but I can’t say that I’ve studied the hypothesis carefully (or intend to at this point).

I’m not sure who you mean by “they”. There are numerous actors in the LENR/cold fusion field, and they don’t always agree among themselves. There are a number of hypotheses that have been proposed to explain the phenomena that Fleischmann & Pons and other researchers have claimed to observe, and “D+D->4He” is just one—the first one, really. If you were reacting to Zawodny’s slide presentation, I can tell you that, although it may not be perfectly clear from the context, slide #10 is is actually dismissing the validity of the “D+D->4He” hypothesis. Like I said, Zawodny is a proponent of the Widom-Larsen hypothesis (slides #12 and #13).

[vansig]

yes, a neutron may be formed from a proton and an electron. usually, this happens only in the nucleus, by electron capture.
— http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron#Stability_and_beta_decay

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