On Dec 18, 2011, at 8:22 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
Daniel Rocha <[email protected]> wrote:
Jed, among LENR researchers, who is not old, or very old?
The ones who are dead.
Only old people can do this. For a young researcher cold fusion
would be career suicide. Even talking about it. She would be fired
and would never get another job. Even Bockris was nearly fired.
Miles -- a distinguished fellow of the institute -- was reassigned
as a stock room clerk. Mizuno was told he would never be promoted
unless he renounced it. He never was. Nearly every researcher I
know has been subjected to harassment, bullying, threats, sabotage,
and so on.
- Jed
One lasting achievement of Rossi's genius at generating free
publicity may have been to bring young people into the field. Once
it becomes clear in the mind that nuclear reactions triggered by
chemical potentials, without nuclear waste, is a reality, however
impractical at this point, and the desperately needed benefit to
society such a process can have, if successfully optimized and
engineered, the field has more lure than sirens singing and combing
their hair sitting on a rock.
The timing of all this is unfortunate. Should an ignominious failure
of Rossi' s venture occur, following the Solyndra, Inc. bankruptcy
and scandal, that will likely result in the ferreting out and
dismantling, unfunding, of any LENR work in the government or
academia whatsoever. Perhaps that is already underway.
Despite the lure, if no proven major practical development occurs,
the field will be once again be left to old retired folks, self
funded personal time efforts, wildcat businesses, dilettantes,
hobbyists, and frauds.
If LENR research is suppressed in the US then the US will be the
worse off for it.
The opposite approach is justified. As I wrote on page 36 of:
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/CFnuclearReactions.pdf
"There are clearly extensive possibilities for the exploration of
LENR. The best way to do so is through use of an interdisciplinary
team, backed by extensive laboratory and computing facilities.
Expertise in electrochemistry, nanotechnology, materials science,
particle physics, supercomputer simulation, and a wide variety of
engineering fields is required. The best lattices and operating
conditions are not likely to be found by Edisonian search, but
through a combined computational experimental approach which is team
directed."
Best regards,
Horace Heffner
http://www.mtaonline.net/~hheffner/
