Rossi claims that he is being funded by the Defkalion Energy of Athens,
Greece. On his blog, someone with the e-mail address
stsalikog...@gmail.com says he is the contact at Defkalion Energy. He
says his devices are being manufactured by the Leonardo Company of Florida.
I did some elementary background checks with the help of a friend who
speaks Greek. So far I have discovered:
1. Defkalion Energy of Athens, Greece is a real registered company, but
the people there say they have never heard of Rossi, his device or
stsalikoglou. They have never heard of Bologna U.
2. The person who answers messages to stsalikoglou responds in English
and gives no sign of understanding Greek.
3. The Leonardo Company of Florida is defunct. See:
http://www.corporationwiki.com/florida/fort-myers/leonardo-corporation-6341154.aspx
It is registered at 49757 Mars St Fort Myers, FL 33905. Google street
view shows only small houses and mobile homes (beat up old trailers)
there. There is no way anyone could be manufacturing 100 devices at this
location, and I doubt anyone with the money to do this would live there.
Rossi also claims a degree from a non-existent university, and a
technical adviser Prof. George Kelly, University of New Hampshire – USA,
who does not exist.
This is appalling.
If Rossi deliberately set out to give the impression he is a fraud and a
con man, he could not do a better job. If he is trying to fool people,
he is using methods that cannot possibly work in the Internet era.
I do not know what to think Maybe he is just making a spectacle of
himself, or trying to throw people off his trail.
I was planning to hold off reporting this. I have asked some other
people to confirm it. However, I just discovered the page about the
Leonardo Company. Ironically, I found it because there is a link from
that page to LENR-CANR.org, because one of our reports lists the
Leonardo Company. The street view was the last straw.
I have revisited the notion that his demonstration may be fake. Several
skeptics offered reasons why that might be the case. Most reasons can be
dismissed out of hand, for example, the notions that the flow rate is
changed, or there are hidden wires, or hidden chemical fuel. However
Flavio Tarallo has proposed an idea that is at least plausible, although
highly unlikely in my opinion. He believes the flow of water might be
diverted inside the machine, such that one tube leads to the
thermocouple and RH meter, and another bypasses them. The flow of water
is then joined and it empties out of the end. Let me quote his message
describing this:
"The temperature and 'air quality' measurements were taken INSIDE the
reactor, (in holes prepared by Rossi) instead at its final output.
Nobody could see inside the reactor so there are a lot of possibility.
One possibility I thought is that an amount of the water flow have been
diverted. One part of the water flow actually goes inside the "hot
core", heats and became vapour and another part simply bypass everything
in another internal pipe and go directly to the output where it is
re-mixed with the first part. Nobody measured the output steam flow or
its speed (should be around 74 m/s for 5 g/s flow!!!) The electric power
input was sufficient to vaporize the fraction of
the water flow that goes into the core and that is measured. With a
divertor commanded by a simply thermo-sensor, all can you see from
outside is a behaviour like a start of internal energy generation insted
it's only the start of a flow fractioning. All this consideration is
independent from the honesty of Rossi, there is this possibility so it
has to be denied by a new measure (possibly without steam production)."
I do not know if the holes were prepared by Rossi. Anyway, this method
would call for a complex set of hidden remote controls, to accommodate
observations such as the one that the temperature was higher when input
power was reduced from 1000 W to 400 W.
I do not think we should judge the results of a test based on the
personal integrity of the person doing the experiment, especially when
the people actually conducting the test are legitimate university
professors using their own instruments. But when the person making the
claim goes to such extremes as this -- listing non-existent universities
and referring inquiries to a company that has never heard of him, for
crying out loud! -- while assuming other people will not notice these
things, it is impossible not to entertain profound uneasiness about the
claims.
- Jed