It no longer seems that we are dealing with the question of whether LENR/Cold Fusion is real or not. Regardless of what you call it, there is a growing body of evidence that unexpectedly large amounts of energy can be produced from some kind of non-chemical nuclear reaction in a desktop environment — exactly what Pons and Fleischmann announced in 1989. While there is certainly room for debate about exactly what might be causing excess energy production, it is difficult to make a rational case that it is not possible to find a cold fusion effect at all (which has been the prevailing opinion in the mainstream scientific world since 1989). One need only browse the Library at LENR-CANR.org to see hundreds of research reports that indicate that over the last decades many researchers have been able to detect a real cold fusion effect and that LENR is a legitimate field of scientific inquiry.
Slowly, public, academic and media perception of the cold fusion/LENR field seems to be changing. We are now seeing LENR discussed more openly and more frequently by people from respected institutions such as NASA, MIT, the U.S. Navy, University of Bologna and other places. Some of the stigma associated with working in the cold fusion field seems to be wearing off it seems, as scientists are willing to publicly discuss their work and interest in this area.
And of course we have Andrea Rossi involved in the most ambitious LENR project to date — bringing his E-Cat into the homes of people around the world as a practical low-cost source of heat and (eventually) electricity. Rossi’s contribution, if his goal is achieved, would be by far the most significant of all. He has said that his only interest is to create working products — working in the laboratory and writing scientific papers holds no interest for him. Science is really only beneficial to the human race if it has a practical application, and Rossi wants to be the first to do that with LENR.
If Rossi is successful in his quest the world will certainly change, and we will no doubt see huge amounts of interest directed into the LENR field, and research and development in the area will explode. In time we could well see Pons and Fleischmann’s contribution to the world of science re-evaluated and be considered one of the most important in history.
