Rock_nj <[email protected]> wrote: Rossi is either going to have something named after him (like a scientific > unit, how about the cold fusion input/output ratio, the Rossi Ratio?) for > being famous as the one who commercialized cold fusion or he will go down in > history as one of the greatest hucksters. I have been disappointed many > times by the field of alternative energy. I hope I am not disappointed by > Rossi once again.
I have often been disappointed too. Especially by lone inventors. But never by professors at major universities or Royal Academies and the like. In every case I can think of, such people have accomplished what they claimed. This may be because they are conservative and make only limited claims. I would be a lot more wary of Rossi if his claims had not been verified by mainstream scientists. Not that Levi or E&K are better at measuring energy using these methods than Rossi is -- or than I am, for that matter. But they have more at stake. Their reputations are important to them and I'm sure their background is impeccable. I have no doubt that the various skeptical objections made about their tests are nonsense. Claims that these results might be wrong by a factor of 1000 or 10 or 5 are preposterous. It is at least conceivable that energy is being added to the system in a fraudulent manner, by some extremely subtle technique. But the notion that this calorimetry might be that far off by mistake is as preposterous as claiming that 747 airplanes cannot fly and they only look like they are flying, in an optical illusion. When I say I could probably do about as good a job as Kullander has done, here is what I mean. Kullander's general knowledge of energy is way ahead of mine. It is probably as far ahead as Martin Fleischmann's knowledge of electrochemistry, or Schwinger's knowledge of physics. Comparing us is like comparing someone who has written books in Japanese (Alex Kerr) to someone who has a couple of semesters of undergraduate Japanese and can carry on a conversation. Despite this difference, it might not have occurred to Kullander to sparge the steam. I might have a narrow advantage. Someone who has a few semesters in Japanese might know specialized vocabulary for Wall Street trading that Alex Kerr or I would not know. A U.S. soldier using a weapons system in cooperation with the Japanese Self-defense Forces probably knows vocabulary that Kerr and I would not know. - Jed
